The chief executive of the automaker Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, has resigned, the company said on Sunday, amid a decline in profits and slumping sales in its key North America region.
Mr. Tavares, 66, spearheaded the creation of the company in a 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and France’s Peugeot. The company is one of the largest automakers in the world and produces vehicles under an array of brand names, including Chrysler, Jeep, Ram, Dodge, Fiat, Peugeot, Opel and Maserati.
“Stellantis’s success since its creation has been rooted in a perfect alignment between the reference shareholders, the board and the C.E.O.,” the company’s senior independent director, Henri de Castries, said in a statement. “However, in recent weeks different views have emerged which have resulted in the board and the C.E.O. coming to today’s decision.”
Mr. Tavares could not immediately be reached for comment.
The resignation took effect on Sunday, the company said in the statement. Mr. Tavares had announced this year that he planned to retire at the end of his current contract, in 2026. The company also said a search for a successor by a special board committee was “well underway.” It added that a new executive committee, headed by John Elkann, the chairman of the Stellantis board, would run the company until a permanent replacement for Mr. Tavares was named.
Mr. Elkann is a grandson of Gianni Agnelli, the Italian industrialist who founded Fiat. Mr. Elkann worked closely with Sergio Marchionne, who engineered Fiat’s 2009 takeover of Chrysler, which was going through a bankruptcy.
Fiat Chrysler became profitable and grew under Mr. Marchionne, who died unexpectedly in 2018.
By 2020, though, both Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot were struggling to keep pace with other automakers that were investing tens of billions of dollars to develop and produce electric vehicles, and a merger between the two companies was forged. The combined company renamed itself Stellantis in 2021.