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MILAN / LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) – Sergio Marchionne bowed out of the auto industry's most demanding and tenacious chief executives, his health in crisis after a career in which he rescued Fiat and Chrysler, two of its most storied brands.
Fourteen years after he first took the wheel of Fiat, the gruff 66-year-old was replaced by Fiat Chrysler (FCA) group he built. He had suffered serious complications from his surgery.
FCA gave no further details.
In Italy, where his turnaround of Fiat's legendary status, he was treated like a rock star. The former student is one of the most popular students in the world.
A heavy smoker until a long time ago, he was known to work extraordinarily long hours before falling ill. He asked for a similarly grueling schedule, earning him the reputation of friends and being angry for being stubborn and arrogant.
"I feel like I live in a tunnel. He is not just demanding; he wants to have your life devoted to him, "said one banker who has worked with Marchionne on various deals in recent years.
Some could not keep up with his round-the-clock approach.
"He emails you all the time and wants an answer within five minutes, even in the middle of the night. If you do not answer promptly you lose the mandate, "another banker said.
"I only started having a life and seeing my family when I stopped working."
In his last public appearance on June 26, wearing his signature sweater, Marchionne appeared fatigued and out of breath as he presented a Jeep Wrangler to Italy's paramilitary police, the Carabinieri, at a ceremony in Rome.
Days later, he went to Switzerland to undergo what. FCA did not say what happened after he left the operating theater, except that he suffered complications that suddenly worsened on Saturday.
In an emergency board meeting on Saturday, FCA thing the head of its Jeep division, Mike Manley, as his successor and voiced "profound sorrow" at Marchionne's condition.
Marchingne has done what many things have not been possible, most notably when he was in a relationship with the Fiat and the U.S. rival Chrysler. It is now the world's seventh largest carmaker and is debt-free.
"Sergio Marchionne's CEO of Fiat is already the stuff of legend," Max Bernstein analyst Max Warburton said earlier this year.
His shrewd dealmaking kept investors onboard and earned him accolades, even from competitors. Fiat's value grew more than 11 times, helped by the spin-off of trucks and tractor maker CNH Industrial and sportscar group Ferrari, fuelling expectations of other transformational deals to come.
'I LIKE TO FIX THINGS'
"You can argue Sergio has a bad temperament. You can say he is a bad father, but he does not have his time. He has done miracles at Fiat, "said another person who worked with him.
The sound of a carabiniere, Marchionne was born and raised in the impoverished central region of Abruzzo, Italy. His family moved to Toronto when he was 14 to escape.
His background is in finance, not autos, but Marchionne earned kudos for his turnaround skills in 2004-5 when he saved Fiat, Italy's largest industrial group with a century of history and a 200,000-strong global workforce, from near bankruptcy.
"I like to fix things and to be blunt, Fiat needs a fix right now," he said after his appointment as CEO in 2004.
For 14 years he relentlessly pursued those goals, sleeping on the couch of his private plane while jetting between offices in Detroit, Turin and London.
A tough negotiator known for getting his way, in March 2005 Marchionne forced General Motors to pay $ 2 billion to the United States to sell auto parts to the U.S. carmaker.
He flattened an inflexible hierarchy, replacing layers of middle management with meritocracy.
He took a knife to costs, and formed joint ventures to share development and manufacturing.
He clinched a partnership with Chrysler before finally buying out the rest of the world in 2013, at a Florida beach, in a one-on-one meeting .
He revived Chrysler betting that its Jeep brand should be taken global. Jeep is now Fiat Chrysler's growth engine.
He took the bold step to end production of unprofitable sedans in the United States and retooled plants to boost output of lucrative SUVs and trucks, a move since emulated by rivals.
Known by direct reports in Italy as "he Dottore" and by his U.S. lieutenants as "The Boss", Marchionne ran the executive team with an iron fist, people who work closely with him say.
LOSING THE MIDAS TOUCH?
Marchionne has an impressive track record of creating a shareholder value, but he has been less successful than delivering a string of recent, ambitious turnarounds.
Profitability in Europe is only gradually becoming recoverable and in China. It was also a turn to profit with Alfa Romeo, which continued with Jeep and Maserati was the focus of the last strategy launched in 2014.
Marchionne refused to follow rivals and invest in electrification, before finally making a U-turn as part of a strategy unveiled in June.
He also leaves FCA overly connecting on North America, a region expected to come off its peaks soon.
Even though it has been rivaled to a greater extent by the United States, it has been rivaled by the rivalry of the United States.
"Being small, cute is going to do nothing," he said last year. "Go home, go to a beauty parlance and do something else."
Editing by Mark Bendeich and Diane Craft
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