Fiat has denied it is shifting its legal company headquarters from Italy following the planned merger with Chrysler Group.
“This issue, treated several times in the last year by the world’s media, is not the order of the day as the chief executive of Fiat, Sergio Marchionne, has recently reiterated,” a Fiat spokesman said in a statement sent to the Reuters news agency.
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The statement referred to a Bloomberg report this week, citing sources familiar with the matter, as saying Fiat was considering moving its headquarters to the US.
No final decision on the headquarters has been made and other options were being examined, the people said, Bloomberg reported.
Brooks Patterson, the top executive of Oakland County, Michigan, where Chrysler is based, reportedly had dinner with Marchionne in Turin last year while on a trade mission and pitched the idea.
“If it materialises, and I hope it does, it’s good news,” Patterson told Bloomberg. “I think it enhances the entire Motor City image. It is for us a coup, a home run. Actually a grand slam.”
Marchionne had said last month he favoued a primary listing in New York for the company.
The Fiat spokesman’s comment came after remarks by Marchionne on a 29 April conference call in which he said the company emerging from an expected merger of Fiat and Chrysler Group would be headquartered in the geographical region that has “the adequacy of capital markets (necessary to) support our operations going forward.”
In the call, Marchionne, also CEO of Chrysler, added: “Europe is becoming a less and less relevant fact in the scheme of things” as its share of the global car market diminishes.
“Italy in 2012 represented 10% of the overall sales of this (Fiat) Group,” said Marchionne. “And I think it’s a stark reality for someone who has been a Fiat aficionado all his life. This is a different house. It looks at the world in a completely different way.”
