Golding's Take

By: Rob Golding

Financial analyst and former city slicker Rob Golding's regular sideways look at the automotive business.

GOLDING’S TAKE: Marchionne tells rival car makers to behave

2 February 2012

Sergio Marchionne was in ebullient form when he hosted the telephone conference call to explain the Fiat/Chrysler financial results announced yesterday (1 February).

GOLDING’S TAKE: GM’s value to the US Treasury is on the slide

10 November 2011

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson was quite straightforward in his assessment of General Motors when he reviewed the third quarter financial results. “They are solid. But we have more work to do to be sustainable,” he said.

GOLDING’S TAKE: Ford delivers cars not divi cheques

26 October 2011

Thank goodness for Alan Mulally and the hair shirt policy that he introduced at Ford when he cruised in (from Boeing) to take the helm at what was a very sick company.

GOLDING'S TAKE: Land Rover ready to stoke Evoque fires

7 October 2011

Body-in-white capacity at the Tata Motors-owned Halewood Land Rover factory has been increased in a hurry and a third shift has been arranged to allow round-the-clock production of the new Evoque if need be.

GOLDING’S TAKE: GM Europe is in profit and will not be sold

4 August 2011

GM chief Dan Akerson has dismissed the rumours of an Opel/Vauxhall sale. This is quite a departure in that his colleagues have now spent several weeks declining to do any such thing.

GOLDING’S TAKE: Renault’s new man has a plan

28 July 2011

Renault this morning [28 July, 2011] was very full of the can-do and the must-do. As its new boss and his head bean counter fielded questions from sceptical investment analysts on the half-year financial results, two things became very clear. One: there is much to do. Two: Carlos Tavares, the chief operating officer, is well aware of it.

GOLDING’S TAKE: Faulty Towers

9 May 2011

The UK government’s business department, and its subordinate Insolvency Service, have decided that John Towers was at fault when he ran MG Rover. He and his three fellow owner-directors have been banned from holding UK company directorships for between three and six years.

GOLDING’S TAKE: Dan The Man and Dan Ammann explain the plan

6 May 2011

So what you have got here is Dan The Man Akerson who has been chairman and chief executive of GM for the last 10 months, and the brand new chief financial officer Dan Ammann.

GOLDING’S TAKE: VW in overdrive on quest for world domination

28 April 2011

VW Group is still talking the talk of the playground bully. When the top brass came on the conference call (27 April) to disclose the numbers for the first quarter of the financial year the first line of chat was VW’s size and muscle. “We have moved strongly on our strategy to be the most successful auto company.”

GOLDING’S TAKE: Hats off to Ford top hats

27 April 2011

Alan Mulally has changed course. His commentary on Ford’s first quarter financial results yesterday (Tuesday) was more about the cars than the numbers.

GOLDING’S TAKE: Green leather

1 April 2011

Car makers this month (April) will meet to deal with the growing crisis of restricted leather supplies. The Federation of Automotive Leather (FOAL) is shocked at the severity of the squeeze on leather following the control order on CO2-producing cattle herds.

GOLDING’S TAKE: The Americans slip up on oil….again

31 March 2011

Obama is new to it admittedly. And he put on a decent show. He stood at his lectern solemnly and lengthily and said that Libya was just another example of how vulnerable the US is to imported oil.

GOLDING’S TAKE: Putting the spark in premium cars

23 March 2011

To Germany to find out how electric motors jump from milk floats and golf carts to Audi and BMW without leaving the premium cars feeling a little flat.

GOLDING’S TAKE: Schwarzenbauer on Audi's sales bonanza

10 March 2011

Audi is extremely pleased with itself and we should probably change the way we say things: the premium car sector has long been a collective term for Mercedes, BMW and Audi… and usually in that order. Having gone past a million sales and both of its rivals in volume, and having a compelling alphabetic advantage, should it not become Audi, BMW and Mercedes?

GOLDING’S TAKE: GM's new helmsman hits choppy water

24 February 2011

Dan Akerson sounds like the man who is running the business at GM. The wounded old company released its 2010 earnings today and the new man in the wheelhouse steered strongly into the swell of questions from equity analysts and financial and auto industry journalists.

GOLDING'S TAKE: Ford’s chief financial officer. Is his number up?

31 January 2011

Here we go: back to the bad old days at Ford. Alan Mullaly’s sprucing up of Ford’s processes has just neglected to keep an eye on the crucial matter of managing profit expectations.

GOLDING'S TAKE: Ford has a new Focus and a new focus

28 January 2011

The C-segment Focus is only a mid-sized car but is a Really Big Thing for Ford. For a start, it is will be a talisman for Alan Mulally’s mission to cement his beloved 'One Ford'. This is another car that can and will sell everywhere – a trick that so far has been pulled off only by Japanese and German car makers. Squaring the needs of Basildon and Houston in the same mainstream mid-sizer is a class act if you can pull it. Mullally goes further. The Focus will be on 120 markets worldwide.

GOLDING’S TAKE: Akerson is getting switched on at GM

17 January 2011

It’s always a bit of a worry to be sitting at a restaurant table, chewing a celery stick and minding your own business, when the chairman and chief executive of General Motors sits down opposite.

GOLDING’S TAKE: The challenged man handling Fiat, Alfa, Lancia, Chrysler and Jeep

20 December 2010

Imagine you are Andrew Humberstone. There you are minding your own business in the Gulf states, happily wholesaling Ferrari and Maserati for the Fiat Group and playing polo with the rich and famous, when Sergio Marchionne himself no less, rings and tells you to catch a flight to the UK and take charge of Fiat over there.