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The following report is based
on items which appeared in the Financial
Times as well as
Reuters today. Fiat shook up its car brands today, splitting the Maserati marque from Ferrari and link it more closely to its sporty Alfa Romeo name. The move is widely seen as the first step in a long-awaited listing of
"Under this deal, Alfa Romeo and Maserati will establish a close technical and commercial collaboration especially in big international markets," Fiat said in a statement. Maserati is wholly owned by Ferrari, which in turn is 56 per cent owned by Fiat group. Much of the rest of Ferrari is owned by Mediobanca, the Italian bank. Under the move the Fiat group is likely to buy in Maserati and move it into shared development and distribution initiatives with Alfa Romeo. The revamp will almost certainly lead to an initial public offering of Ferrari, which was considered in 2002 but rejected in favour of the sale of the stake to Mediobanca. The strategic rethink would follow Fiat's resolution this week of its dispute with General Motors over the ownership of its lossmaking Fiat Auto division, which accounts for 40 per cent of Fiat's revenues. It would represent the first big step by Sergio Marchionne, Fiat's chief
executive, to demonstrate the group's flexibility and turnround prospects
after the settlement with GM. Fiat hired former Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Karl-Heinz Kalbfell to run Alfa, one of three brands that make up the mass market car unit Fiat Auto, from the beginning of this year. In 2004 ex-Ford executive Martin Leach took over at Maserati. Maserati and Ferrari together sell 10,000 cars a year and the two units broke even in 2003. Analysts believe they will see a small loss in 2004 when the results are reported later this month. Fiat believes Maserati would be better positioned for growth if it was separated from Ferrari, in part because it could then use less costly Alfa Romeo components. Alfa Romeo - which sells about 180,000 cars a year - is one of the few bright spots within Fiat Auto; the rest of the car division is bleeding cash at the rate of about €1bn (£690m) a year. Alfa could benefit from Maserati's research and development spending, while the two marques could also share marketing and distribution costs. At the moment Alfa is mostly sold in Europe while Maserati uses the Ferrari dealer network in the US. Fiat could decide to relaunch Alfa in the US using that network.
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