Carlos Tavares, the executive in charge of mega global automotive parent company Stellantis, was clearly not going to stay in his job for long, though it was recently announced that he’d retire in 2026 at the end of his contract. Friends, he didn’t even make it out of 2024.
None of this is a surprise. Tavares, pictured above, managed to accomplish record profits during the pandemic at the expense of almost any sort of obvious plan for the future. His management style put French managers on top of Italian and American subordinates. He frequently feuded with the Italian government. Dealers, workers, suppliers, and customers were all mad at him.
Perhaps most telling of all, Tavares couldn’t keep making big margins in North America, which is a necessity for Stellantis as the company needs North American profits to offset losses in Europe and other markets. Stellantis announced today that Tavares had resigned. Here’s the statement:
Stellantis N.V. (“Stellantis” or “the Company”) announces that the Company’s Board of Directors, under the Chairmanship of John Elkann, accepted Carlos Tavares’ resignation today from his role as Chief Executive Officer with immediate effect.
The process to appoint the new permanent Chief Executive Officer is well under way, managed by a Special Committee of the Board, and will be concluded within the first half of 2025. Until then, a new Interim Executive Committee, chaired by John Elkann, will be established.
Stellantis confirms the guidance it presented to the financial community on October 31, 2024, in respect of its full year 2024 results.
Stellantis’ Senior Independent Director, Henri de Castries, commented: “Stellantis’ success since its creation has been rooted in a perfect alignment between the reference shareholders, the Board and the CEO. However, in recent weeks different views have emerged which have resulted in the Board and the CEO coming to today’s decision.”
Chairman John Elkann said: “Our thanks go to Carlos for his years of dedicated service and the role he has played in the creation of Stellantis, in addition to the previous turnarounds of PSA and Opel, setting us on the path to becoming a global leader in our industry. I look forward to working with our new Interim Executive Committee, supported by all our Stellantis colleagues, as we complete the process of appointing our new CEO. Together we will ensure the continued deployment of the Company’s strategy in the long-term interests of Stellantis and all of its stakeholders.”
This is immediate, so he’s out.
The big question is: What were those “different views” referenced here? At least one view is probably that Tavares wanted to stay with the company and not many other people seemed to share that view. Dealers called the brands helmed by Tavares a disaster, customers were upset with the company’s direction, and even Tavares himself called his view of North America “arrogant.”
It sort of sounds like the classic “If you do X I’ll resign” bluff might have occurred and the Board called his bluff, but that’s just a wild guess.
There are a lot of words that need to be written by me, specifically, but I’m going to give Tavares and others a chance to chime in before picking this up in TMD tomorrow.
Image: The Wedding Singer
Gone away is the old chief, here to stay is the same grief. Look up John Elkann and draw the same conclusion.
Homeboy earned nearly $40M last year. I’m all for capitalism, but WTF? Does he owe Stellantis shareholders and employees money this year?
Why don’t corporate statements list how big their golden parachute was worth when a CEO resigns?
If you’ve ever played the game Football Manager (this being a mostly American website so I’m guessing likely not), there is a function within the game where you get to interact with the board/chairman and make requests.
When said request is turned down, one of the possible responses is “If you don’t grant me this request I don’t think I’ll be able to continue in this job”.
Feels like that’s what happened here.
I never played the game, but the Brexit rules they had sounded pretty cool that could go from minimal impact to completely screwing your team over.
The old Robert Moses strategy. It works… till it doesn’t.
Good riddance.
So Tavares was Ghosn’s protege at Nissan/Renault. With some of the solvency rumors coming out of Nissan last week I have to wonder if he got a phone call from his former employer. Not that I think that would be the best direction for Nissan but I could see them trying to do anything to get some of the old profitability back.
That’s hilarious! It wouldn’t be the craziest idea.
Its just stupid enough for someone to try it.
Newer better idea: CEO of Tesla now that Elon’s pay package got struck down again.
If that comes to pass, I’d advise Tavares to hold out for a generous golden shipping crate.
I don’t think he even had the concept of a plan
A difference of opinions with the board, where the board wanted Stellantis to be a competently run profitable company and Carlos apparently was indifferent on that point.
I’m sure the next CEO will be just as toxic for the collection of storied brands the Stellantis accounting firm has been smothering for the last decade, but a car enthusiast can dream.
Somehow the new ceo is Akio toyoda
He’d have a stroke when he found out how every auto company that is not Toyota “follows” the Toyota Way.
I first saw this news on mainstream media and was keenly missing the reference to “Carlos Tavares (pictured above)”. That will never cease to be funny.
I concur with the sour-spirited take of others that it must be nice to be able to run a company into the ground and profit handsomely from it. I’m a Mopar and AMC fan from way back and what has been done to run once-proud makes into the ground is an absolute shame.
Too bad. Loved the Jon Lowitz jokes 😀
Plenty of SNL alumni that can be tapped for CEO impersonations. Chris Farley was the first to come to my mind, but for F***’s (pronounced Ford) sake we’ll leave that one alone.
Stellantis needs a marketing genius to pull out of their slide. I heard they are interviewing personnel from Jaguar.
They probably already did. Dodge just released a new “ad” or whatever called “Save the Planet”. With the new Charger Daytona EV. Today. Who thought that was a smart idea?
Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxtJ5yi_yps
Man. Run the company into the ground and sail off into the sunset with your millions.
Must. Be. Nice.
It’s like he found rock bottom and then dug a basement.
That’s my plan here. But change “millions” to “hundreds”
Name a Portuguese speaking Carlos that studied in French schools and was fired from CEO of a troubled hodgepodge automotive conglomerate.
Never expected this to be multiple correct choices.
If it’s anything like the bullshit technical project I tried to do a week or two ago (as part of an application process – still working retail for now), you still have to choose a best answer.
Ghosn is the correcter answer, at least until Tavares flees prison by hiding in a banjo box or something.
It took me a good 5 seconds to get past “I thought he was still in jail?”
i didn’t know Ghosn spoke portuguese
Brazilian press was all over the Internet gushing about the fact Ghosn lived in Brazil until a teenager. After his fall from grace, though, he is now Lebanese.
And nothing of value was lost.
I would love it if they tried to hire someone who did not need an 8-figure salary, worked in the industry, lowered prices, increased quality, and was not worried about quarterly profits but long-term survival. And in other fairy tales.
But they must pay an appropriate executive compensation package! The executive compensation board, full of executives, says so!
Yep! I have a buddy who has worked 30+ years in Chicago corporate finance and says he has never seen a CEO worth more than $1-2 million/year in all that time.
But the people doing the hiring only care about quarterly profits
This is why so many decent American companies are flailing or failing.
Weirdly, I’m gonna kinda miss old Pictured Above.
-thanks for all the hearty chuckles, Carlos!
Surprise – Not Surprised.
“We’ll just jack all our prices during the pandemic and squeeze all our loyal customers for every penny, pricing ourselves out of both our vehicle class and our customer base and that’s gonna last forever, right? Right?”- Tavares
Not only was the pricing an issue, but you can’t sell a vehicle you don’t make. Their lineup in the US and Canada was already super thin, and then they just let the Charger, Challenger, 200, and Cherokee go without their replacements?
That’s not bad strategy. No one overlooked that or screwed up the project timelines. That was intentionally pushing development budgets down the road to inflate profits. And the people who get paid big bonuses when profits are high got the big bonuses, and now the other 99% of the people who work there are going to pay for it.
And it was utterly ridiculous because Marchionne had already pushed development at FCA back by several years while he was seeking the merger with PSA. While he did not live to see that through, I’m sure he had the expectation that his car company would at the very least continue to “make cars”.
Kicking that can even further down the road was a stupendously bad decision by Tavares.
“Perhaps most telling of all, Tavares couldn’t keep making big margins in North America, which is a necessity for Stellantis as the company needs North American profits to offset losses in Europe and other markets.”
Were they losing money in Europe? Do you have a source for that? The latest I could find about this was the pre-merger reports of PSA and FCA. According to that both had around 5-5 billion euros of profit normally in the previous years.
He has been CEO for less than 4 years (Stellantis is less than 4 years old). That’s barely enough to make a new car from 0. So the cars they have now, and those that will come in the next year, more than likely came from pre-merger decesions. His side has a pair of new Citroëns for Dacia rivaling prices (plus the same cars dressed up as Opels/Vauxhalls). But unlike Dacia, these are also available as EVs. They also have the new 3008 and 5008 (and the Opel Grandland, that fits somewhere between these 2), with batteries supposedly comming from ACC for the BEV variants. (We all heard about what happened to Northvolt…)
The FCA side has the Tonale/Hornet, some indistinguishable large Jeeps (where the Grand Cherokee has good enough sales numbers, still gets booed), the 500e and the new Charger.
So I’d say his mistakes after merger were:
– not axing some new models with FCA roots, like the Tonale/Hornet, and the 500e (for the US),
– not making an americanized 5008 that could be sold as a Dodge or a Chrysler.
I don’t think you’ve been paying attention, bub. It’s so much worse than that, and allllllll of these articles over the last several months show this
The amount of clowns I’ve fought with on here about this company being done for, is unreal. They ignore everything and say “lol look at recrod profitz”. Some people can’t think long term and it’s almost as if it’s a cultivated feature in this social media world.
They’re in a bad place and will be for years, but didn’t the last balance sheet show ~$50B in cash on hand? That’s enough to spin up new products and factories from scratch… If they have any remaining employees capable of doing the work.
Come look at your comment in a year and see if they did any of that. The answer is most of the brands will be sold or discontinued. 50 Billion won’t last as long as you think, it’s a new world, Trillions are the new Billions and Billions are getting like Millions used to be when I was a kid. Local high school rebuild for a few hundred kids wants 110 million dollars. Now imagine a huge conglomerate who needs to be redone from top to bottom over dozens of brands. That ain’t cheap, and mistakes will be made. Also…who is going to all of a sudden buy their cars because Carlos is gone? 99% of car buyers don’t know who he is in the first place.
Dead company walking!
Jeep gets spun off to someone that wants to make cars for enthusiasts
Makes a fair amount of profit
Gets purchased by VC/OEM car builders
gets squeezed for sweet, sweet capital
lather rinse repeat, though maybe with loss corrosion on exterior hinges?
Fair point, they got all that cash by not doing any of that for so long that they’re now in this position, but it’s not impossible that they have lucked into being the only player to have kept their powder dry. If investors were impressed by all the money they made in 2023 ($20B), well… They’ve got enough cash to spend like they should have in 2023 from now until mid-2027, even if profits are nil.
Of course, that requires that the money doesn’t get blown on buybacks to prop up the valuation until senior leadership has finished dumping their shares. Current valuation is well under $50B, so that’s a real possibility.
that’s the overall point of course. If you don’t think like Tavares, the market as a whole doesn’t keep spiraling upward. And when that actually stops….look out, man
They have no answer for the RAV4/CX7/CRV at Jeep. The hornet was perhaps the plan for the american market to compete with the juggernauts from japan but it landed too expensive and before they could cut costs to juice market share, the reliability issues came to light.
I understand that he inherited the RAM which for years had traded profit for market share through incentives. For sure he was in a difficult situation; charged with increasing profit margins while holding the line on market share. In the end trying to do that with out a volume play in the compact/midsize CUV segment was never going to work.
This alone is enough for any CEO at a major manufacturer to lose his seat IMO.
“They have no answer for the RAV4/CX7/CRV at Jeep”
And that’s because the answer for that should be coming from Chrysler, Dodge or both.
And they need to do their homework on the RAV4/CX7/CRV and come out with a vehicle that meets or beats those… or at least be almost as good at a lower price point.
That’s essentially what the Dodge Journey was. And it was another vehicle that FCA stupidly cancelled without a replacement.
This is the thinking that has them in the situation they are in. Weirdo purists are stuck in some loop where they don’t think the brand that essentially created the SUV should also sell CUVs.
The fact of the matter is the SUV market moved to CUVs because the consumer really just wants AWD for the occasional snowstorm and decent ride height for visibility but they don’t want to pay the MPG or ride quality penalties for a true SUV. To let that slip away is outright stupid.
If they want to stay a viable brand they need to produce a low cost 4×4 platform like the original 2 door basic wrangler to get kids hooked on the brand and then give them a RAV4 competitor for when they grow up and realize they want more creature comforts. That used to be a leap to a JGC before Stellantis decided that needed to be 40k+ vehicle.
They can keep thinking the JGC is a viable stepup product but eventually kia is going to strap some TRD style cladding on a telluride and just keep nibbling at marketshare on the large SUV market.
They seem rudderless from the outside looking in. I’m going to guess the insider view isn’t much different based on this outcome.
FCA had constantly lost money at every other market except for one: North America. FCA was held together by the US market, which was why Fiat gave them the massive injection of cash as early as 2009/2010 for the 2011 vehicle updates, then first prioritized the US to get new products before quickly swapping to Alfa Romeo and Maserati and abandoning the American brands.
While merged, sure, Stellantis was making money in every other market. But separately, Fiat struggled hard elsewhere.
That’s probably the best thing he could’ve done. The Hornet/Tonale, 500e, and Wagoneer twins have been the only product releases since the merger for the US. Meanwhile other markets have had considerable growth and have models coming out every like 3 months.
Without any of the FCA products, the US would’ve had any new vehicle releases until likely next year, since the Charger Daytona and Wagoneer S still haven’t really hit dealerships yet, while the Recon is MIA.
He at least put something out. Whether or not it was good is up for debate.
carlos is that you?
It was hard to choose just one Jon Lovitz GIF at Tenor because several of them fit very well, but this one has a tone that’s suitable, yet optimistic in its own way.
I’m really going to miss all the Lovitz references
I don’t think he’ll disappear, entirely, so keep ’em at the ready
“Carlos Tavares (pictured above) named new head of Nissan/Renault”
chicken dinner
While I don’t at all see the resemblance, I’m all for more Lovitz and the consistent use thereof.
I can hear Jon Lovitz’s voice saying, “Will you accept my resignation that you ordered me to tender?”
“That’s just fine, I’ll just take my millions…billions! And go home to my wife…MORGAN FAIRCHILD!”
If he had anything to do with the name Stellantis he definitely deserves to go.
Stellantis board read about the Bears giving Matt Eberflus the sack and though, hey…
Great minds…I came here to post “I know of another organization where Tavares would fit right in…. your new Chicago Bears head coach!”
I hope it’s a coincidence that 2 Auto CEOs named Carlos have tanked their respective companies.
Well, to be fair Ghosn’s companies were doing so well that he could run up $100 million in personal expenses billed to the companies before anyone noticed.
Unless your name is Carlos, I think you’re good