Fiat Chrysler's New Strategy: Ignore the Future

Ask any auto executive about the issues that keep them up at night, and they'll reply with one or more of the following:

Addressing these pressures requires the scale to compete profitably and the cash to invest in new technologies, which puts smaller automakers, such as Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, at a distinct disadvantage. So it was hardly a surprise that Fiat Chrysler's chief executive officer, Sergio Marchionne, spent much of the last year trying to drum up a merger that would give his firm the ability to face these challenges head-on. But with his search for partners meeting with universal rejection, Marchionne has turned to a bold new strategy to manage these staggering threats: arguing that they aren't really real.