Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo is happy to stay at Renault and still has a “job to do” amid reports linking him with the top job at Stellantis.
De Meo, who has been responsible for the industry’s most remarkable of turnarounds at Renault, has been tipped as a front-runner to take the Stellantis CEO role from Carlos Tavares, who left the company suddenly on Sunday amid a series of mounting crises.
Speaking to Autocar at a Renault and Alpine Car of the Year test event in Paris, de Meo said links to other jobs were not something he courted nor craved.
“I’m not looking for anything,” he said. “Renault right now is a very nice place to be. Renault has a great team. We enjoy meeting every day. People are gaining confidence with no arrogance and are true to themselves. People are looking out for each other.
“That’s the kind of environment I want to be in. And I’ve got a job to do [pointing at the Renault 5 and Alpine A290].”
De Meo – arguably the finest automotive executive of his era, having turned Renault from losing €140 million a day in 2020 to the best-ever profits in the company’s history less than three years later – also reflected on his career as a CEO and what motivated him.
“The first time I had a CEO job was 20 years ago, at Fiat. Now I’m 57. When I was 35, 36, I was such a young, hungry executive, wanting to make his way in life. Then at 37, I had everything I could have dreamed of,” he said.
“I came from nowhere, I had to earn everything. I was from a very modest family in the south of Italy, and then I had it all at 37.
“It was a tough time at Fiat then, similar to Renault in the last few years. I had to completely turn around Fiat, and Sergio Marchionne [then Fiat SpA boss] was a tough boss. Eighty per cent of the company’s problems were on my P&L: we were losing €5m a day.
“We had to grow very fast. In early 2007, I was about 40, after the launch of the 500. I wondered how to keep the momentum going for the next 20 to 25 years, so I could retire at 65.
“I concluded that there are two things that motivate me. I want to spot talent and develop that into leadership. Young people, senior people, whatever. I like to see people develop. I’m not on an ego trip [looking out for myself]; I don’t care.
“The other thing I like is being told a job is impossible, that you’ll never do it. That’s exactly why I did what I did to go from the Volkswagen Group to Renault. Lots of journalists, industry colleagues, old Renault executives, they said it was a waste of time, that I would ruin my career. It didn’t.”
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