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Newly merged Fiat Chrysler
Automobiles is moving ahead as a global force, Chief Executive
Officer Sergio Marchionne said Tuesday as he unveiled the
company's new five-year strategic business plan.
"Today we begin to write a new book, not just a new
chapter," said the Canadian-Italian Marchionne, whose plan
includes developments in the Maserati and Alfa Romeo brands as
well in Chrysler's divisions.
"It's a big day," with a unified plan that represents a
"courageous" break with the past for the former Turin-based Fiat
and Michigan's Chrysler.
The plan for 2014 through 2018 is designed to help the
combined group, the world's seventh-largest, become a major
global force in the auto industry.
That includes seeing Chrysler's popular Jeep division hit
its target of selling one million vehicles in 2014, said the
division's chief executive Mike Manley.
By 2018, the SUV-maker aims to be selling 1.9 million
vehicles annually, more than double its 732,000 sold in 2013,
according to the FCA industrial plan.
Meanwhile, Chrysler aims to more than double its current
sales in 2018, brand CEO Al Gardner said.
Driving the projected growth are two new models, the
Chrysler 200, on the US market this year, and the Chrysler 100,
available in 2016.
And Fiat aims to sell 1.9 million cars in 2018, up from 1.5
million sold last year, the Italian division announced.
Marchionne told shareholders in late March that he plans to
see a combined output of more than six million autos per year by
2018.
He also said he expected to see FCA listed on New York's
premier stock market before year-end and possibly as early as
October.
By listing on the New York Stock Exchange, FCA would be
more widely traded and better able to raise capital.
Marchionne hatched the audacious idea to take over the
Detroit automaker after Fiat rescued bankrupt Chrysler amid the
US economic crisis in 2009.
Five years later, Fiat finally gained full control of
Chrysler in a $4.35-billion US deal with a United Auto Workers
union healthcare trust approved early this year.
FCA has also become more global, with FCA's new
headquarters in the Netherlands, its tax base in the UK, and it
will be listed on the New York and Milan stock markets.
Despite that international reach, Marchionne has said that
Fiat has not abandoned its roots in Italy.
Still, he remains concerned that Europe's auto market has
not yet recovered from years of economic struggles that have
contributed to six years of weakness in auto sales.
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