Daimlerchrysler—a Merger Made in Hades

UNIVERSITY OF LA VERNE

La Verne, CA

DaimlerChrysler—A Merger

Made in Hades

Prepared for

BUS 500F: Marketing (the core)

Prepared by

March 3 2014

College of Business and Public Management

Department of Business Administration

1. Do you think Schrempp was wise to replace the top Chrysler executives?

Why or why not?

As my opinion, Schrempp was not wise to replace the top Chrysler executives. We can find evidence in this case, after merged. Chrysler was bleeding money. During the second half of 2000, Chrysler lost $1.8 billion and went through $5 billion in cash, this at a time when GM and Ford were still doing well. By 2000 Eaton was long gone, along with nine other top Chrysler executives, including the renowned designer, Thomas Gale. Then in November 2000, Eaton’s successor James Holden, a Canadian, the last high-level non-German remaining, was also given the ax. His replacement was a Daimler executive, Deiter Zetsche, a tall German with a walrus mustache. For chief operating officer, Zetsche brought with him Wolfgang Bernhard, an intense young engineer with an MBA from Columbia who was a stickler for cost-cutting. It could have been worse: Zetsche could have brought a big team from Germany, instead of only one other man. Still, indignation surfaced at his putting German executives in top positions of this old American firm—a firm that had played an important part in defeating the Germans in World War II. As we learned from the 500F, top executives are the core values of company. Schrempp failed to see that top executives are not easy to replace. The new replacement can not easy to adapt the organization. The new replacement did not give the company a good sale, Chrysler bleeding his money and losing their business, Chrysler faced a disaster for their perspective. In the article, the author pointed out that Chryesler had the huge losses in the second half of 2000. I think all of these bad situation are all relevant with the bad...