From a table on the terrace at the most exclusive restaurant on the banks of Lake Geneva, the deal seemed like such a good idea. The luxury and class of Mercedes combined with the mass-market appeal of Chrysler was supposed to create the world’s most popular cars and most profitable car company.
But Jörgen Schrempp, the former Mercedes Benz chief who instigated the $38 billion deal, and Bob Eaton, his Chrysler counterpart who agreed to it over dessert in that Lausanne eatery, could not have been more wrong.
Less than a decade after that historic and, some would say, excessive lunch, the 1998 merger of Germany’s Daimler Benz and Chrysler of the US has proven indigestible.
More than 40,000 jobs have been cut from the vast automotive empire, plants have been shuttered, assembly lines stopped.
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