David Rosenthal

Yeah.

It truly is amazing what they did.

And saved the company, too.

I mean, Chrysler and Dodge and Jeep and all of its brands are a thing today and part of Stellantis today because of what Fiat and Sergio did during the financial crisis.

The French company.

Okay.

Yeah.

One of those French car companies that, you know, we're not going to make an episode about.

So as everything is stabilizing at Fiat and returning to success, in 2010, Luca steps down from the Fiat chairmanship and returns solely full-time to Ferrari.

John Elkin assumes the Fiat chairmanship then.

He's now ready to be the steward and heir of the Agnelli family and work with Sergio in running the Fiat empire.

But there is one cost there.

to taking over Chrysler, which was that in doing so, Fiat had to assume Chrysler's debt, including about $5.5 billion that it owed the US and Canadian governments for the bailout.

So when this happens, the combined debt load for FCA, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, balloons up to over $11 billion.

Fiat announces to Wall Street as part of the merger, though, Sergio does, hey, we've got a plan and we are going to reduce that from over $11 billion to $1 billion or less over the next four years by 2018.

They are forecasting a lot of debt reduction.

Some of that will come from cash flow.

And some of that might come from other places.

So Sergio needs, you know, a lot of cash to meet his promise to Wall Street and pay down the debt.

Where's an easy place to find it?