Chrysler’s Image Problem is a Reality for Cerberus
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Chrysler is in a bad way. Sure, there are the basic metrics that don’t bode well for the automaker. Sales were down around 36% in June, the biggest decline in the industry. It just made use of a line of credit from minority owner Daimler (yes, it’s true it had to use it or lose it). It’s lineup is way way out of line with the current trend toward smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles.
But what really dogs Chrysler is the widely held, and much combated (by Chrysler executives and those at majority owner Cerberus Capital LLC) that the company is merely being run for the time being for an eventual break-up and sell off.
Merrill Lynch’s new Car Wars report says, “We believe …that this is an active decision by new owners [Cerberus] to rationalize the product portfolio in advance of a break-up/sale.”
Not that Merrill is always right. But when you have a firm as stealthy, private and dark as Cerberus, the “Dick Cheney” of private equity firms, “> running a company as public as an auto company, analysts and media are bound to expect the worst and project the darkest motives.
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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Auto Beat
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