Latest news with #Agnelli
CNA
2 days ago
- Automotive
- CNA
Stellantis names Italian Antonio Filosa as its new CEO
MILAN :Franco-Italian-US automaker Stellantis on Wednesday named Antonio Filosa, the Italian head of its North American operations, as its new chief executive, effective from June 23. Filosa, 51, will be expected to focus on the challenging task of reviving Stellantis' fortunes, especially on its key U.S. market, after it suffered a 70 per cent drop in net profit and a 6-billion-euro ($6.75 billion) cash burn in 2024. "The board selected Antonio Filosa to be CEO based on his proven track record of hands-on success during his more than 25 years in the automotive industry", Stellantis said in a statement. Filosa will also need to rein in Stellantis sprawling 14-brand portfolio - with analysts and experts thinking the automaker should terminate or sell some of them - and complete a process to restore the group's fraught relations with dealers, unions and governments. He succeeds Carlos Tavares, who quit the group in December after sharp drops in profits and sales raised questions about his management. Since then, the automaker has been provisionally led by its Chairman John Elkann, a scion of the Agnelli family that founded Fiat, now part of Stellantis. The Agnellis are Stellantis' single largest investor through their family holding company Exor. The group's other brands include Peugeot and Jeep. Having exceeded 27 euros early last year, Stellantis's Milan-listed shares shed over two thirds of their value in the following 12 months. Stellantis was created in early 2021 through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot's owner PSA, with Carlos Tavares, the former PSA head, as its first CEO. Filosa has been leading Stellantis in North America since October. In 2023 he was also appointed global head of Jeep, one of Stellantis key brands, a role he quit this year when, as part of a wider management reshuffle, he was also given the additional role of Stellantis global chief for quality. An Italian national, Filosa was born in the southern city of Naples, spent his youth in the region of Puglia in the south, and graduated in engineering from Milan's Polytechnic. Married to a Brazilian architect, he is the father of two sons and has a passion for water polo. He joined Fiat Group in 1999, where he covered several roles, predominantly in Latin America, becoming Fiat Chrysler chief in the region in 2018. He then served as Stellantis COO for South America. Despite his Fiat background and Italian nationality, he has hardly ever worked in Italy and can offer the global profile that the Stellantis board had been looking for to address issues at the multinational carmaker. His recent years as head of Stellantis' North American business can also prove an asset in dealing with President Donald Trump's administration and respond to its tariff policies.
Reuters
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Reuters
Stellantis names Antonio Filosa as its new CEO, source says
MILAN, May 28 (Reuters) - Automaker Stellantis ( opens new tab has appointed Italian Antonio Filosa as its new chief executive, a source close to the matter said on Wednesday. The new CEO succeeds Carlos Tavares, who quit the group in December after a sharp drop in profits and sales, especially in the United States, raised questions about his management. Since then, the Franco-Italian-US automaker has been provisionally led by its Chairman John Elkann, a scion of the Agnelli family that founded Fiat, now part of Stellantis. The Agnellis are Stellantis' single largest investor through their family holding company Exor ( opens new tab. The group's other brands include Peugeot and Jeep. Antonio Filosa is expected to focus on the challenging task to revive fortunes, after the automaker suffered a 70% drop in net profit and a 6-billion-euro ($6.75 billion) cash burn in 2024. Having exceeded 27 euros early last year, Stellantis shares shed over two thirds of their value in the following 12 months. The new boss will also need to rein in Stellantis sprawling 14-brand portfolio -- with analysts and experts thinking the automaker should terminate or sell some of them -- and complete a process to restore the group's fraught relations with dealers, unions and governments left by Tavares. Stellantis was created in early 2021 through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot's owner PSA, with Carlos Tavares, the former PSA head, as its first CEO. Antonio Filosa, aged 51, has been leading Stellantis in its key North American market since last October with a task of reviving sales at the group's powerhouse, after its market share shrank in recent years.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
With Iveco Defence up for sale, Italy may lose a key military supplier
ROME — Prospective buyers are lining up to acquire Iveco Defence Vehicles - Italy's biggest military vehicle maker - and the Italian government may struggle to stop it being sold overseas, a source has told Defense News. The chief supplier of fighting vehicles to the Italian army, IDV could be sold by year's end by its parent company Iveco, which is owned by the Exor Group, which is the largest shareholder in car maker Stellantis and controlled by the Italian Agnelli family. On May 15 Iveco said IDV would be spun off this year, with a possible sale to follow. 'By the end of the year the spin-off will start and in the meantime offers to buy the firm will be evaluated,' said a spokesperson. 'We have had preliminary offers from various strategic players,' said CFO Anna Tanganelli. Last year IDV saw revenue rise by 15% to €1.1 billion ($1.3 billion) as land-warfare budgets grow around the world in response to the Ukraine war. One firm has publicly thrown its hat in the ring to date. On May 8, the CEO of Italian defense giant Leonardo, Roberto Cingolani, said Leonardo had put in a joint offer with Germany's Rheinmetall. Leonardo and Rheinmetall are already in business with a joint venture announced last year to build 1,050 new infantry fighting vehicles for the Italian army based on the Rheinmetall Lynx and 132 tanks based on Rheinmetall's under-development Panther KF51. IDV also has a slice of the huge Italian vehicle order. In December it said it had signed a deal with Leonardo to take 12-15% of the development and production work on the deal, which has been valued at €23 billion. Leonardo and IDV already had a longstanding joint venture in place, called CIO, which builds VBM wheeled fighting vehicles and wheeled Centauro tanks for the Italian army. An industrial source said Leonardo offered to buy IDV for €750 million last year but was turned down. 'They could have had it if they'd offered a billion, but they didn't,' said the source. Meanwhile, numerous firms from around the world are reportedly ready to put in offers for IDV, with Spanish media suggesting Spain's Indra is ready to pay €1 billion, while U.S. funds and French-German consortium KNDS also reportedly keen. BAE Systems will be seen as possible bidder after it announced on Thursday a partnership between BAE Systems Hägglunds and IDV to offer its BvS10 all-terrain vehicle to the Italian army, with design and manufacturing to happen in Italy. BAE already builds amphibious vehicles with IDV for the U.S. Marines. The industrial source said however that given IDV's ties to the Italian military and to Leonardo, there would be reluctance to see it sold to an overseas buyer. 'The Italian army and members of the government would like IDV to stay Italian,' said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. But Cingolani has suggested Leonardo will be reluctant to pay top dollar just to keep IDV Italian, and Exor will likely be seeking maximum profit on the sale of a firm which is flush with work, knowing the firms outside Europe are increasingly interested in buying EU businesses as the bloc builds up its defense war chest. One solution being touted in the Italian media is that the Italian government use its so-called 'Golden Power' law, which can be used to control or block the sale of strategic Italian firms. But an Italian expert on the law said it might not be applicable in the case of IDV. 'The law is usually used to impose conditions for a new buyer, as occurred when GE bought Italian firm Avio Aero, or to stop a purchase by a buyer considered potentially hostile. But there has never been a case when it was used to exclude one or more bidders in a group of bidders,' said the source, who declined to be named. 'If the Italian government, which has a controlling stake in Leonardo, blocks a sale to Indra for example, could that be legally challenged as market interference? Indra is not China,' said the source.
Reuters
15-05-2025
- Automotive
- Reuters
Iveco approves spinoff plan for defence unit as it considers its sale
MILAN, May 15 (Reuters) - Italian truck and bus maker Iveco Group ( opens new tab said on Thursday it will press ahead with a plan to spin off its defence business while exploring interest from potential buyers for the unit. The group, controlled by Exor ( opens new tab, the investment company of Italy's Agnelli family, said in February it was considering spinning off the unit, known as IDV, to simplify its structure and create greater flexibility for both businesses, adding it would provide an update in the following months. The separation is expected to take place this year, the company said. The group said it had received preliminary expressions of interest from potential strategic buyers for its defence business. "The board has therefore mandated the management to continue the preparation for the spinoff, while exploring such preliminary interests," it added. Leonardo ( opens new tab, together with Germany's Rheinmetall ( opens new tab, has filed a non-binding offer for IDV, the CEO of the Italian aerospace and defence said last week without providing further details. According to a media report earlier this week Spanish defence company Indra ( opens new tab also sent a non-binding offer. The announcement came as Iveco posted a 42% contraction of the adjusted operating profit of its industrial activities for the first quarter of the year, to 117 million euros ($131 million), due to lower truck demand in Europe. The result was short of a 140 million euro analyst consensus provided by the company. Iveco also confirmed its preliminary forecasts for its full-year results, including one for adjusted EBIT from industrial activities of between 850 and 900 million euros, with CEO Olof Persson mentioning a "strong order book" for the company. ($1 = 0.8937 euros)
Times
09-05-2025
- Automotive
- Times
Meet the nuclear engineer with a thing for fast cars and boats
Jacques Sicotte likes speed — and collecting. The French nuclear engineer has dabbled in watches, and for 15 years he raced a 1931 America's Cup 12-metre class sailboat that was once owned by the Agnelli family, the founders of Fiat. Fitting, as the Canadian could pass for a silver-haired Italian industrialist. But it is engines and pistons, on land and water, that really set his heart racing. For a runabout from his home on the Côte d'Azur, he has a £1.75 million Swedish J Craft speedboat that allows him to bypass the traffic on the Riviera and gives him the same thrill, he says, as skiing on fresh powder snow. 'When the Med is flat I can reach 42 knots, which is really fast for a yacht weighing 12 tons,' he says. However, he has also been known to use it for the after-school run for his two teenage children. His first love, though, is his collection of 60 cars, which are meticulously stored in his garage. It's a passion that dates back to his childhood. 'When I was growing up in Montreal, my friend and I would go to a scrapyard at the weekend and buy old Volkswagens, which we would bring back home on a trailer, chop up and make dune buggies out of,' he says. Several decades later it's not welded-together Beetles that populate his garage — 'they never came back in one piece, by the way, we'd always wreck them in the sand dunes' — but mostly vintage and Italian classics: Ferraris, Alfa Romeos and Maseratis. His garage is his happy place: 'When things get a little stressful, I go and sit in there. The smell of these old engines with their leather interiors … it's really unique.' It has been a long journey from Canada to the south of France for this connoisseur of the automotive world. Along the way his priorities as a collector have shifted. 'In my late thirties I was mainly into American muscle cars. I remember going on honeymoon back in Montreal in a '57 Corvette.' It was, Sicotte says, about the performance. 'I liked having these rugged cars, with their amazing accelerations. But when I came to Europe, I started to collect older Ferraris and Maseratis — and it wasn't so much the performance that appealed, it was the style, it was the beauty.' He cites his 1961 E-Type Jaguar as 'one of the most beautiful cars ever made', and singles out his Ferrari Dino: 'The 206, the coupé, I mean, the shape … if you look at it from the side — these curves, this sensuality. It's unique. It's not performance, it's beauty.' These cars were designed by passionate people, which is why they inspire passion: 'I love the sound,' he says, but not just of the engine. 'A manual Ferrari has a very particular stick shift, and click, clack, clack is the sound it makes.' Sicotte says he is now more a fan of aesthetics than adrenaline, but he still enjoys the thrill of the drive. Among his collection there are some modern state-of-the-art machines that he races. 'I do what we call the Ferrari Series, where we drive race cars on F1 circuits, like the 488 Challenge that has won Le Mans. It is competitive, but how shall I put it … people are careful not to break the car.' Nonetheless, it's exhilarating. 'Racing on the track is the only way you can find out how technologically advanced these cars are. You're pushing almost 280 kilometres an hour.' • The greatest classic cars ever — chosen by our expert Does he drive his more classic motors too? 'I make a point of it,' he says. Although, he adds, 'they're not really cars any more — some are now considered industrial art. The record at auction for a Ferrari 250 GTO is $51.7 million, and there are a lot of private sales with higher prices.' He has gone from buying US muscle cars for a couple of thousand dollars to owning, among others, an extremely rare 1996 Ferrari F50 in Giallo Modena (the original Ferrari yellow), which may be worth as much as £6 million today. Yet Sicotte is not motivated only by investment. 'As I say to my wife, Linda, I can't sell them. We love them too much,' he says. Linda is involved in making sure that the cars and motorboat are kept in perfect condition, particularly in terms of the restoration and colour combinations of interiors. 'We recently discussed how strange it is that the collection is worth so much more than any property we own.' What he is determined to do is enjoy his machines. 'I do car club events where we drive our classics for a day or two, right up to the big classic events, like the Mille Miglia, which I did a few years ago. That's a four-day event where you drive a thousand gruelling miles in an eligible classic, and to be eligible you need to have exactly the type of car that took part when this was a real race in the 1950s.' Disarmingly, his entry was his Austin-Healey 100. He also takes part in the Ferrari Cavalcades. 'For these yearly events you need to have a Ferrari that's 100 per cent original. It's a four-day, 700km event through the Alps or in Sicily. Last year it was in Morocco.' • Where to buy Eric Clapton's Ferrari or Jack Nicholson's Mercedes As with artworks, the provenance of a classic car is important, Sicotte says, and it's part of the fascination. He talks of his Alfa Romeo 2500 S, one of only three or four made. 'It's one of my favourites: the engine and the chassis were built before the war in 1938 or 1939, and then the aluminium body was added in 1946 — it always wins best in show!' For a true classic, several elements are required, Sicotte says: 'You need beauty, you need style, but you also need scarcity. If they are a dime a dozen, they never become collectables.' More than anything, this enthusiast believes that he is preserving a piece of history. 'I always tell my kids, 'We don't own these very rare cars. We're just custodians for the next generations. We take care of them, we refurbish them, we pamper them, we show them, and then hopefully you will pass them on to your kids, and then your kids will do the same. And in 100 years people will say, 'My God, where did these come from? From another planet?' And they'll say, 'No, my great-grandfather owned them.''
