France was battling to defend its business strategy on Thursday after being blamed for scuppering a $35 billion-plus merger between carmakers Fiat Chrysler (FCA) and Renault only 10 days after the plan was officially announced, reports Reuters.
Shares in Italian-American FCA and France’s Renault fell sharply in early trade after FCA pulled out of talks, saying “the political conditions in France do not currently exist for such a combination to proceed successfully.”
The collapse of the deal, which would have created the world’s third-biggest carmaker behind Japan’s Toyota and Germany’s Volkswagen, revives questions about how both FCA and Renault will meet the challenges of costly investments in electric and self-driving cars on their own.
The French government, which has a 15% stake in Renault, had welcomed the merger plan, but overplayed its hand by pushing for a series of guarantees and concessions that eventually exhausted the patience of FCA, sources familiar with the talks said.
Wrong-footed by FCA’s decision to withdraw its merger proposal late on Wednesday, a French official called FCA Chairman John Elkann early on Thursday to see if he might reconsider, but was rebuffed, one of the sources said.
While France has a long history of government interference in business, President Emmanuel Macron came to power promising a broadly market-friendly agenda. The failure of the FCA deal risks leaving Renault locked into Europe’s stagnant mass-market for cars, and deterring other potential suitors, analysts said.