New FCA CEO Mike Manley Set To Shake Up Group’s Senior Management

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is allegedly about to unleash a tidal wave of top-executive appointments, of which Mike Manley’s appointment as chief executive is just the beginning.

Automotive News reports from a recent FCA shareholder meeting that the new CEO is preparing to make a series of changes among the company’s senior management. The most obvious of those appointments stem from his own, including the Jeep and Ram brands Manley headed before his ascension to the top job, and the Europe/Middle East/Africa region previously run by Alfredo Altavilla, who resigned following Manley’s promotion.

In addition to the roles of chief executive and head of the truck brands, Manley also directly supervises the North American region, just as his late predecessor (and architect of FCA’s merger) Sergio Marchionne did. But the bigger question is whether he’ll carry on Marchionne’s leadership structure or switch to a different, more conventional format.

Marchionne had his top lieutenants taking on multiple roles. For example, AN notes, Reid Bigland was running US sales and Canadian operations in addition to supervising both the Alfa Romeo and Maserati brands, while Steven Beahm oversees all of FCA’s passenger-car brands, including Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge, and SRT.

In a more traditional leadership tree, each of those brands would typically be supervised by a different senior executive, as would group functions like finance, manufacturing, marketing, and individual regional markets.

Exactly how Manley will structure the roles of his top deputies remains to be seen, but he’s expected to announce his team by the end of this month, so we’ll find out soon enough.