According to rumors FCA is considering very seriously to spin off Maserati and Alfa Romeo along with some other brands they own, such as Magneti Marelli, Teksid and Comau.
FCA wants to focus on making cars that will appeal to the mass market, in order to make the company more attractive to a future possibility of a merger with another company. According to analysts, the value of the two luxury brands (Maserati and Alfa Romeo) is estimated around 7 billion euros and the remaining brands that FCA might be spun off are estimated to have a value of up to 5 billion euros.
Bear in mind that FCA did spin off in the past the truck company CNH Industrial NV in 2011 and Ferrari in 2016. The move was considered then highly successful with the participating companies of the FCA Group to have a total value of 57 billion dollars, today, compared with their value of 6 billion dollars in 2004, when Marchionne became CEO.
However, a final decision may not be taken before the beginning of 2018, but it is certain that Sergio Marchionne is preparing the final five-year operational plan before leaving his position in 2019, as he has said.
Alfa Romeo is in the early stages of a transformation to become a global brand of luxury cars and it still needs billions of euros in investments to develop new models that will compete with Mercedes-Benz and BMW. On the other hand neither Maserati nor Alfa Romeo have the prestige of Ferrari to exit “alone” and to be powerful in the market against a very tough competition.
Marchionne has been a supporter of mergers between automotive companies, arguing that the industry is wasting money by developing multiple versions of the same technology. Indeed at times reportedly he has tried to approach other companies, proposing a merger.
