Even if the details of Fiat's bid were not made public, Marchionne did say yesterday during a meeting with Fiat's founding family, Agnelli, that he is confident the deal will go Fiat's way, mostly because the others are not as complex and weaker than the Italian manufacturer.
"Fiat has more than a 50 percent chance of pulling off its bid for Opel. At the end of the day, our's is the only offer that has real content and makes industrial sense," he was quoted as saying by La Stampa. "The others either do not have productive clout or are basically financial: and we have seen with Cerberus, the investment fund that controlled Chrysler, just how weak such solutions can be."
Speaking about the Opel's unions and how they seem to back Magna, Marchionne accused the workers of trying to support managers who have experience only in finance, and not in the industry as a whole.
"Maybe the unions like them because they reckon they can have an influence over certain managers who are expert only in finance and not in industry," the CEO said.
It may seem Marchionne wants Opel perhaps even more than he did Chrysler. According to German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau, Marchionne even plans to guarantee the survival of Opel's plants, at least for the time being.
The most feared contender for Fiat, Magna, also seems to have a back-up plan should nothing come out of the Opel deal. According to some reports, the company has already set its sights on Saturn.
Google News