John Elkann interview with LinkedIn founder.The Importance of Family-Control of FCA

AlexB · Mar 1, 2018

John Elkann: How to Build a Company to Last | Masters of Scale podcast (at https://mastersofscale.com/john-elkann-how-to-build-your-company-to-last/ )
John Elkann/FCA part starts of at 6:40 in the interview.
John Elkann pushes Sergio as a "Truth-Teller"

(First is the family behind Radio Flyer.)
The whole episode from Hoffman (LinkedIn founder) is about the importance of Family-ran businesses.He do get a little annoying.
Some of my favorite parts of the interview which I quoted from the transcript:

ELKANN:
"And as I was doing the apprenticeship, sadly, my grandfather started to not be well. And the business also was in difficulties. So, I quit my job, and in 2002, I came back to Turin to be close to him, to be close to the business. And he passed away in 2003. And then my great-uncle, his younger brother, who was his successor, passed away in 2004. And so, the historical family leaders, within a year, passed away. And I ended up, despite being very young, to be within the family the person closest to the business."

"And so, that’s how I became, at a very young age, responsible for it (FIAT) which was really a combination of being the more involved, and also, sadly, because there was really nobody else."

"It got very dark. It got very dark."

"That first year and a half was terrible. The company was doing badly. It had a lot of debt. And we were mainly indebted with commercial banks, Italian commercial banks, which were worried about the instability that the lack of leadership had. We had changed four CEOs from 2002 to 2004. And the last CEO(Giuseppe Morchio), when my great-uncle passed away, wanted to do a deal with the banks diluting us (The Family), and in effect, taking control of the company ( from the Family). So, the first thing I had to deal with was really to face that."

Elkann:
"Subsequent to those years, we organize ourselves as a family in what I think is an effective way, where we have family members who are responsible, and these family members meet a couple times a year. And then we have a broader family meeting once a year. And we’ve made sure that communication is very clear".

Lampredi · Mar 5, 2018

And yet Exor participated in talks with Chinese Geely regarding a possible sale of FCA...

DAGAR · Mar 5, 2018

And you wouldn’t? Had they offered something far north of $22b, there might have been a deal and who could blame them. It’s a business.

GasAxe · Mar 5, 2018

Is Alfa and Maserati worth $8-9 billion alone?

AlexB · Mar 5, 2018

Kind of irrelevant given how Sergio have stated that they too small to be de-hook from mass Automaker.

GasAxe · Mar 5, 2018

But Sergio doesn't make the final call, remember?

AlexB · Mar 5, 2018

Yes, but Sergio do have his ear.

Erik Latranyi · Mar 6, 2018

Family Control until the family is out of debt

John Elkann interview with LinkedIn founder.The Importance of Family-Control of FCA

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