Fiat

By John Terrett in Business on June 10th, 2009

The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for the sale of Chrysler to Fiat, allowing the third biggest U.S. automaker to emerge from bankruptcy protection within the next few days.

The Court rejected an appeal by a group of Indiana state pension funds that wanted Chrysler’s sale to the Italians blocked on the grounds it was too hasty.

The move came on the same day a bankruptcy judge approved Chrysler’s plan to terminate 789 of its dealer franchises.

Elsewhere in the United States, ten of the biggest banks were given permission to return government cash that was given to them at the hight of the financial crisis.

This was a remarkably swift judgement by the U.S. Supreme Court.

By Abid Ali in Business on May 19th, 2009

Sergio Marchionne, Fiat’s chief executive, evidently thinks he knows something that the rest of the automotive world has yet to work out. How to make a auto merger work.

In his pursuit to create the world’s second-largest car maker Fiat will gobble up Chrysler as well as taking on General Motor’s European and Latin American assets including the Opel, Saab and Vauxhall brands.

But it is worth looking at the wreckage from previous high-profile mergers.

BMW gave up on Rover selling it for just $14, while it also offloaded Land Rover and Jaguar for a more impressive $3 billion to Ford.

Ford in turn cut their losses and offloaded Land Rover and Jaguar to India’s Tata for $2.3 billion. Ford also failed to make Austin Martin a viable concern and is currently courting bids to relieve itself of Volvo.

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