The sleazy leakers of the DaimlerChrysler Management Board

It’s been said that the mark of an effective leader is being open and honest with those they are leading - as much as they can be, at least. (Nobody really wanted FDR to tell the American people where and when the Allies would land in Europe on D-Day.) There are many reasons why openness is considered a mark of integrity - not the least of which is that you cannot challenge someone’s assumptions or conclusions if you have no idea where they stand.

On the other side of the integrity pole is often placed the leaker, the person who snidely provides selected information to the press and keeps their identity secret. Sometimes that is required by common sense - if retaliation will mean the loss of a job and possibly the person’s life (as is all too often the case), and if the information being leaked is of real importance.

Unfortunately, in the case of DaimlerChrysler, the leakers are more likely snide, dishonest cowards - and they are the people who are running the company.

In Germany, as in most of the rest of the world, it is not normal to tell the world when you are planning a big business deal, especially when you are about to jettison a division that sells expensive equipment that requires long-term trust from customers - and especially when the brands involved are guaranteed to make headline news. But that’s what the management board members of DaimlerChrysler have apparently been doing, and they’ve been doing it on the sly. We’re always given “unnamed sources” who are telling the press that Chrysler is worthless and a drag on Mercedes. Never mind that the officials, on the record, tell a different story - that Chrysler profits balanced Mercedes losses a few years back, and that no money has been taken from Mercedes to pay for losses at Chrysler. Yes, the capitalization of DCX has gone down; that’s no big surprise, given the blatant incompetence shown in Stuttgart since the acquistion of Chrysler and certain other world events. The capitalization of Ford has no doubt fallen since they acquired Volvo, but nobody in their right mind would consider Volvo to be worthless. It’s a numbers game - emphasis on “game.”

But those board members - we have to assume that’s what they are, because they are privy to some very closely guarded information, and would have been hunted down and fired if they were not highly placed - keep telling the press that Chrysler is awful, a drag, and a danger to the great German institution, Mercedes-Benz, which claims (falsely) to have invented the motorcar and the truck.

Let’s consider the impact of these statements. They drag down sales as the condescending attitude reaches the general public. How can Chrysler increase its reach in Europe as the German press keeps insisting, based on the words of these board sleazes, that Chrysler is worthless? How can they maintain sales in America as the world watches Daimler ever-more-frantically trying to unload the company to anyone with some cash? How can Chrysler maintain any credibility as the newspapers are constantly fed misinformation about how the union pensions and liabilities exceed the assets? Why should customers buy from this obviously bankrupt company with no future? Why should anyone want to work there?

One outlook not considered in the articles I’ve read so far is the damage this is doing to Daimler itself. Assuming they really are serious about selling Chrysler, one would assume they want to get the best possible price. All these leaks have probably knocked a few billion dollars off the value of Chrysler to any serious buyer. The sheer number of buyout kits sent out, as reported in the press, and the inevitable “we’re not interested” replies by various corporations have also diminished the value of Chrysler, making it seem like an invalid.

Some have suggested that this is all a ruse to fight the unions. Well, again, it’s the sleazy way of doing it, not unlike the pattern of bribery that seems to characterize DaimlerChrysler on the world stage. If you want a deal from the UAW, open your books and make a case - if you have nothing to hide. All evidence shows that Daimler has a great deal to hide from the UAW. But really, any sane union leader - and there’s no reason to think the leaders of the UAW and CAW are no more insane than the leaders of DaimlerChrysler - would, when faced with the prospect of having Chrysler dismantled and moved to China or Russia, deal quite readily. So far as I know, the books have not been opened to the UAW or to anyone outside of Stuttgart, though a “financial packet” has been sent to just about anyone with a few billion dollars and some tenuous connection to the auto industry.

Perhaps Chrysler really needs to be sold - to any company that’s run by people less sleazy and more forthright than the DaimlerChrysler Board. Unfortunately, in a highest-bidder contest, the results of a sale might be disastrous. If the Board had the best interests of its stockholders, customers, and employees at heart, it would be very careful about who it sold to; however, its actions so far show that there’s only two things that matter to them, and that’s their egos and cold, hard cash. And before you start to tell me all corporations are supposed to only care about cold, hard cash - and you call yourself a human being! - I’ll point out that Daimler’s actions so far have been self-defeating in terms of that cash. If they really wanted lots of cold, hard cash, they’d have kept Chrysler going as it was before they started to mess around with it - generating billions in profits and increasing its market share, not incurring losses, overproducing, and losing market share year to year.

Postscript: according to Ron Gettelfinger, UAW representative, the Supervisory Board was given almost no information about divesting Chrysler Group from the Management Board.