Finance minister seeks guarantee no French factories will close before any deal is agreed
The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, wants the chair of Renault to obtain a guarantee from Fiat for workers in France.
Photograph: Benoît Tessier/Reuters
France’s finance minister has demanded that no factories in the country shut and that jobs for French workers be preserved if a proposed merger between Renault and Fiat Chrysler goes ahead.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) on Monday revealed a planned merger of equals between the two companies, which would create the third-largest global car manufacturer, behind Germany’s Volkswagen and Japan’s Toyota. Renault said it would study the “friendly proposal”.
The French government owns 15% of Renault’s shares, meaning its approval is key if the €32.6bn (£28.8bn) merger is to go ahead.
On Monday FCA said it expected €5bn (£4.4bn) in annual cost savings. These are planned to be realised by sharing the large investment burden in autonomous driving and electrification technology – rather than politically painful job losses.
The minister Bruno Le Maire, speaking on France’s RTL radio, asked the Renault chair, Jean-Dominique Senard, for a guarantee “on the preservation of jobs and industrial sites in France” and a commitment that no factory would be closed in the country.
“This is the first guarantee that I requested from Mr Senard on the opening of these negotiations with Fiat,” Le Maire said. “Since I have agreed to the opening of negotiations, it is up to him to come back to me in the coming days on the guarantees he was able to obtain from Fiat.”
Senard, the ex-Michelin boss who was drafted in to replace Carlos Ghosn in January after his arrest in Japan on charges of misreporting income, faces a delicate task to pull off a merger between companies representing interests from multiple countries.
FCA is controlled by John Elkann, a New-York-born scion of the Italian Agnelli family, while Chrysler is American. In recent months the close alliance between France’s Renault and Japan’s Nissan and Mitsubishi has been strained by the ousting of Ghosn.
The Italian deputy prime minister and the leader of the far-right League party, Matteo Salvini, said on Monday that Rome should take a stake in the combined company if required, while welcoming the deal.
Le Maire also asked Senard for assurances that “French interests will be well represented” in the new group and called the merger “a great opportunity for Renault and the European automotive industry”.