By Stefania Fumo
ROME, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Tributes to visionary auto executive Sergio Marchionne dominated the front pages and the airwaves in Italy on Monday, which was the first day at work for his replacement at the helm of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA).
FCA on Saturday appointed longtime Jeep executive Mike Manley to replace ailing Marchionne as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Marchionne, 66, suffered complications after surgery on his shoulder and is in intensive care in a clinic in Zurich, FCA said.
"A giant, he changed the industrial history of our country," former center-left prime minister Matteo Renzi told La Stampa newspaper in an interview.
"If Italy had more Marchionnes, today we might have a competitive Alitalia, or a strong Italian bank out there in the world," said Renzi in reference to the country's chronically ailing airline and debt-burdened banking system.
La Repubblica newspaper ran interviews not only with pundits and experts, but also with FCA factory workers.
"He saved a company that seemed destined to fail," commented Antonio Nittoli, a father of three who has been working at FCA's plant in Melfi since 1997. "He demanded a lot from us... but today there is a future for our workers and our families, and we owe it to him."
Il Corriere della Sera daily interviewed Henry Payne, the auto op-ed writer for The Detroit News. "Marchionne is one of the three most important and innovative auto executives of the past 20 years," said Payne. "He is a peer to Tesla's Elon Musk and Alan Mulally, who rescued Ford."
Marchionne's last appearance in public was on June 26, when he presented a Jeep Wrangler to the Carabinieri military police in a ceremony in Rome.
"My father is a Carabinieri officer," Marchionne, wearing his trademark jeans and black sweater, told reporters at a televised news conference on that day. "In the (Carabinieri) corps I always rediscover the same values that were at the basis of my education: reliability, honesty, the sense of duty, discipline, and the spirit of service."
Marchionne has achieved legendary status in Italy, where he rescued historic carmaker Fiat from the brink of failure upon being named CEO in 2004. He followed this up with a daring move in the midst of the global financial crisis, when he orchestrated Fiat's merger with rival U.S. carmaker Chrysler after it filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
That deal, which took place after protracted negotiations between Marchionne, the U.S. government, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, was so important that it was announced in a televised address from the White House by then-U.S. president, Barack Obama, who explained to the nation that Chrysler's life-saving alliance with Fiat would save tens of thousands of American jobs.
"Marchionne arrived at Fiat after five different CEOs had brought the company to total failure," Marco Bentivogli, secretary-general of the conservative Italian Metalworkers Federation (FIM-CISL), told Sky TG24 private news channel in an interview Monday. "It was losing 1.5 billion euros a year."
"He reorganized the company, progressively reducing its financial debt while at the same time managing to bring about a great international alliance, realizing before everyone else that a consolidation among auto industry players was about to take place."
While Marchionne's strategy involved "very painful" downsizing in Italy it successfully challenged a certain Italian mindset based on "blackmail, which prefers to allow factories to close... and leave workers disenfranchised because they lost their job, which is itself a vehicle for a great many social rights," Bentivogli opined.
Marchionne, who has dual Canadian and Italian citizenship, earned degrees in philosophy and in law as well as an MBA before beginning a career in business. He had been scheduled to retire in April 2019.
Fiat, which is the acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, was founded in Turin in 1899 by a group that included the Agnelli family, of which current FCA Chairman John Elkann is an heir.
It became a household name beginning in the 1930s, when it helped motorize the masses by launching a series of small, compact and inexpensive cars such as the Topolino (Italian for Little Mouse) in 1936 and the 600 model in 1955. This was followed in 1957 by the iconic Fiat 500 model, which became a symbol of post-war Italy much like the Vespa scooter.
In another stroke of genius, Marchionne presided over the 2007 launch of a restyled version of the Fiat 500, which went on to become a best-seller.
On June 1 this year, while unveiling FCA's 2018-2022 industrial plan, Marchionne announced that the 500 would be the "ideal vehicle" for the next generation of battery-powered electrical vehicles, that FCA would invest nine billion euros to go green, and that it would phase out diesel vehicle production by 2021.
"Reducing our dependency on oil is one of the greatest challenges of the coming years," Marchionne said.
