TURNING around struggling carmaker Chrysler could take a decade, says the brand’s US private equity owners, Cerberus Capital Management.
‘We have a model that is ‘buy, fix and hold’. It is not a problem for us to have a 10-year holding period,’ said Timothy Price, Managing Director, to the Financial Times.
Cerberus paid £3.7 billion to Daimler for the marque last year. As we all know, the aim of private equity groups is a quick in and out: buy, turn around, then sell after five or so years for a profit.
But it is not uncommon, said Price, for Cerberus to own companies for longer than its rivals before selling them on.
Price claimed ‘everything is going better than expected’, despite a 25% drop in May sales of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep brands in the United States compared with a year earlier.