Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Friday, May 16. TGIF!
Stellantis Chairman John Elkann promised a new CEO would be named by the end of June, and it's a good bet he's close to announcing a winner. It's already been reported that Americas boss Antonio Filosa is the leading candidate. Anyone else would be a significant surprise.
But whoever it is will need to ensure stories like this one today from Kurt Nagl at Crain's Detroit Business disappear forever. Lawsuits between automakers and suppliers should be a rare occurrence, but Stellantis has made a lot of lawyers rich litigating with the companies that build the components that go into its vehicles.
This week, it was windshield wiper maker Trico Products Corp., which allegedly "extorted" Stellantis for more than $47 million and threatened to cut off deliveries to two assembly plants amid a pricing dispute. Mysteriously, Stellantis filed the suit on Monday and dismissed it Wednesday. And, of course, neither side will talk about it. But the damage is done as far as Stellantis is concerned.
We'll know more in a few days when consultancy Plante Moran releases its annual index of working relations between six North American automakers and their suppliers, but Stellantis has been dead last for years. Lawsuits like this one with Trico won't help improve the score.
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In other news, Hans Greimel tallied up the cost of President Donald Trump's tariffs on Japanese automakers. These trade-reliant carmakers are bracing for a profit pummeling of at least $11 billion, and possibly substantially more, during the coming year as the administration's war on imports unleashes a tsunami of tariff turmoil on the world's No. 2 auto exporting nation, Greimel wrote.
All this came down the last few weeks as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru and Mitsubishi announced weakening financial results.
Meanwhile, corporate governance issues cropped up at Volkswagen Group during the German auto giant's annual meeting. Shareholders took aim at CEO Oliver Blume's dual role as head of VW Group and Porsche, a contentious issue since Porsche's listing as a separate company in September 2022, Reuters reported.
That's it for now. Have a great weekend. If you want to view this story in your browser, click here.
— Philip Nussel, online editor
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