Sergio Marchionne, the CEO and Chairman of Chrysler Group LLC, has appeared on CBS News 60 Minutes during the “Resurrecting Chrysler” portion.
When Marchionne decided that he would try to turn around the beleaguered car maker Chrysler, he knew it will be a long shot. That was three years ago. These were the lines expressed to an interview with Steve Krotf in a segment on 60 minutes.
“As for any other CEO’s in the car business, they wouldn’t have touched this with a 10-foot pole,” Sergio Marchionne says in the interview. He took Kroft through the process of transforming the floundering company such as Chrysler into a profitable contender in the global auto market.
“I remember, when I came here, in 2009, there’s not a thing worse for a leader than to see fear in people’s faces. The scene at Chrysler was dismal when I arrived,” says Marchionne. “The workers were afraid they would lose their jobs and he was taking on the challenge of saving those jobs by resurrecting a moribund company. There wasn’t a CEO in the world from the auto side that would have touched this with his all efforts,” adds Marachionne.
Here is an excerpt of the interview. “Chrysler was losing money and market share and had gone into chapter 11. It lacked the technology to provide the smaller, more efficient, fuel-saving vehicles the market was demanding. All these things are long shots. If it was that easy, then everybody would do it,” he said.
“It’s been a long, rocky road but the fear has gone. I think the world of American workers. What happened here at Chrysler would have been impossible without the commitment that they’ve shown, absolutely impossible,” says Marchionne regarding his workforce at Chrysler. Receiving a multi-billion dollar bailout loan from both the U.S. and Canadian governments, the road to recovery for Chrysler included cutting the layers of bureaucracy at Chrysler, upgrading factories and refreshing 16 models. Marchionne indeed proved his mettle to lead Chrysler towards the road to success.
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