Rumours of Iveco Group sale: parent company Exor reportedly in talks with Tata Motors

Obligatory premise: there is nothing official at the moment. Only, so to speak, news and press launches that have been chasing each other since the afternoon of Friday 18 July, under the impulse of a Reuters article.

The Exor holding company, which holds the relative majority of shares in Iveco Group (under whose umbrella lie Iveco Bus and Heuliez Bus), is reportedly in talks with the Indian automotive giant Tata Motors with a view to a possible sale of Iveco Group, the on-road part resulting from the spin-off of the CNH group at the beginning of the decade.

According to press sources, IDV, the brand specialising in the defence sector, which has also been involved in other negotiations in recent months, would remain out of the negotiations with Tata.

Possible sale of Iveco Group: the reactions of markets and unions

As reported by Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24Ore, for example, it would have been the emissaries of Tata Motors who contacted the Agnelli family to start talking about a transfer of ownership of Iveco Group. With the markets open, there was an immediate positive reaction to the tam-tam of news, with an increase in the order of 9 per cent in the Iveco Group share price on the Italian Stock Exchange on 18 July.

At the same time, however, the reactions of the main Italian trade unions were not long in coming. They wrote a letter to Adolfo Urso, the Minister for Enterprise and Made in Italy, expressing their concerns about the possible repercussions on employment. It is difficult, however, to make predictions at this stage: it is necessary to wait and see how the affair develops.

Several times in recent years there has been talk of the possible sale of the brand by its parent company Exor. The best known negotiation is the one that was supposed to lead to an agreement with the Chinese of FAW in 2021, which was then skipped also due to the intervention of the Italian government. We will know soon whether this will be the right time. At the moment there is no comment from Exor.