Fateful death of a salesman

When Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, died last month after a failed surgery in a Zurich hospital, newspapers all over the world lamented the death of a ‘rock star’ – not a moniker one would usually attribute to a hard-working manager, even when so successful as he was.

His personal style, Muratti-smoking, espresso-downing and preferring black jumpers over suits, may have contributed. But what journalists mostly emphasised was his incredible fortune to turn around – against all odds – a car maker that had been destined to collapse under a burden of debt, production losses and workers discontent.

When Marchionne was picked by John Elkann, 28-year-old heir to Italy’s crumbling Agnelli-empire, he was not an obvious choice. The former director of the Swiss goods control company SGS may have fancied fast cars but he had never worked in the car industry. He was a lawyer and accountant and anything but flamboyant. A far cry from the style icon and international playboy Gianni Agnelli, the industry patriarch who died in 2002, a year before Marchionne was called to the helm of Fiat.

Agnelli was the uncrowned king of Italy. He inspired fashion magazines and designers...