Summit rearrangement

03 Jun 2016

This news was spread out all over the world at the end of May and it did surprise a lot of people: Harald Wester, both Alfa Romeo and Maserati managing director, was very quickly dismissed from his positions due to a rearrangement of the staff. He will be replaced by Reid Bigland, who is already considered a brilliant businessman because of his successful results as sales manager within the Fiat Chrysler group in the US.

This decision can be interpreted in two different ways. On the one hand, the two men are both very capable but in different ways. After a first phase focussed on developing new technologies, FCA is now ready to pursue a larger expansion into the market, especially in northern America. Wester was the perfect man for the first phase but Bigland is definitely better for the latter goal.

On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to neglect a strong linkage between this rearrangement and the very fast decrease in sales that Maserati has been facing recently. This loss was so bad that Maserati had to withdraw some vehicles from the American and Chinese markets. It might also be that the delay with the launch of the Alfa Romeo Giulia model has played a key role in Wester’s dismissal.

However, Marchionne has of course only mentioned pure functional reasons for this decision; nobody knows what lies hidden behind the curtain. We do know, on the contrary, what Maserati future is going to be like: seventy-thousand registrations per year by 2018; that is their main new goal.