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RÉCIT - L’ex patron portugais menait la vie dure aux salariés du groupe, avec sa chasse aux coûts permanente. L’héritier Agnelli a repris les rênes. Il impose un changement de style, qui soulage les équipes.

Le champagne sabré à la cantine du centre de recherche et développement de Vélizy, c’est une première chez Stellantis. Un événement inimaginable il y a encore quelques semaines, alors que régnait l’austère Carlos Tavares. Les 130 cadres de direction du groupe venus de toute l’Europe ce vendredi 6 décembre, à la demande de John Elkann, le nouveau président du «comité exécutif intérimaire», n’en sont d’ailleurs pas revenus. Par ce geste inédit mais aussi par son discours, le petit-fils de Gianni Agnelli, l’emblématique patron de Fiat, a voulu ouvrir une nouvelle ère, après l’éviction le 1er décembre du directeur général portugais. John Elkann, qui pilote aussi le holding familial Exor, premier actionnaire du groupe et préside de surcroît le conseil d’administration, a demandé à ses hauts cadres «de ne jamais faire de compromis sur la qualité des produits Stellantis, ou sur la relation avec nos clients et parties prenantes».

« Le message était de ramener le calme et la sérénité au sein du groupe, sans pour autant changer de cap », résume l’un des participants. Calme et sérénité : le virage est net, après des années de tension permanente au sein du groupe aux quatorze marques (Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Opel, Chrysler, Jeep, Ram, Maserati...). Et pour bien faire passer le message, John Elkann a rencontré, dans chaque pays clé du groupe né de la fusion de PSA et de Fiat-Chrysler, les cadres de direction, tout en multipliant les visites des usines historiques comme à Rüsselsheim (Allemagne) chez Opel et à Mirafiori (Italie) chez Fiat. Une véritable tournée diplomatique. À chaque fois, l’héritier de la famille Agnelli distribue de bonnes nouvelles. « Toutes les usines vont rester en activité », promet-il, alors que la plupart d’entre elles tournent au ralenti faute de commandes. Le changement de ton est «sidérant». « La vitesse à laquelle il s’opère est extrêmement rapide», résume un cadre supérieur de Stellantis.

Les relations avec les gouvernements aussi ont pris un tour nouveau. Sur tous les continents, John Elkann, enchaîne les rendez-vous rassurants avec les chefs d’État, alors que la défiance à l’égard des hommes politiques en Italie et aux États-Unis s’était infiltrée à tous les étages du quatrième groupe automobile mondial ces dernières années. On se souvient de l’échange musclé entre Carlos Tavares et la première ministre italienne Georgia Meloni en février 2024. Celle-ci avait pris contact avec le Chinois BYD pour qu’il s’installe en Italie. Une manière de faire pression sur Stellantis, seul constructeur en Italie, accusé de ne pas investir assez au pays de Fiat. «Ceux qui seraient en train de flirter avec les constructeurs chinois pour les inviter à venir en Italie empruntent la même route que ceux qui ont vendu Volvo à Geely ou MG à un autre constructeur chinois», avait cinglé Carlos Tavares.

Amadouer Donald Trump

Ces changements de ton sont surtout synonymes de ruptures plus profondes. Des décisions stratégiques prises par Carlos Tavares n’ont pas tardé à être abandonnées par la nouvelle direction en Europe et aux États-Unis, signe qu’elles suscitaient le doute et le désaccord depuis un certain temps.

Premier revirement : le bon élève de l’électrique en Europe va désormais se montrer moins allant, à l’image de ses concurrents. Stellantis qui s’était désolidarisé de l’Association des constructeurs automobiles européens (Acea) fin 2022 est revenu au bercail du lobby du secteur. Il réclame désormais, comme son rival Renault, d’assouplir la réglementation sur les émissions de CO2 des véhicules, par crainte des amendes prévues fin 2025 et pour mieux répondre à une demande trop timide de véhicules 100% électriques.

De l’autre côté de l’Atlantique, une volte-face a aussi eu lieu. Pendant la campagne électorale américaine, un bras de fer s’était engagé entre Donald Trump qui se posait en défenseur d’une automobile 100% «made in USA» et Carlos Tavares, qui voulait continuer à accroître la production au Mexique. Preuve de ses bonnes dispositions à l’égard du nouveau président, l’équipe de John Elkann a, elle, annulé juste avant Noël le projet de supprimer 1100 postes dans l’usine Jeep de Toledo, dans l’Ohio. Stellantis espère que cette décision sera suffisante pour calmer le sénateur républicain de cet État, Bernie Moreno, qui a fait fortune dans la distribution automobile. Ce dernier, qui se targue de son influence sur Donald Trump, est allé jusqu’à interpeller John Elkann en lui demandant de céder Chrysler avec ses différentes marques (Jeep, Ram, Dodge, Chrysler), afin que le constructeur redevienne 100% américain.

Une politique contre-productive

Le changement de cap est également très net avec les concessionnaires, ambassadeurs des marques du groupe auprès des clients. Chez PSA déjà, Carlos Tavares était convaincu que les distributeurs gagnaient beaucoup trop d’argent sur le dos des industriels. Pendant le Covid, il a élaboré une stratégie commerciale fondée sur le développement des ventes digitales qui réduisait les coûts de distribution d’environ 20%. « Mais le produit automobile, c’est compliqué à vendre en ligne. Ce ne sont pas comme des imprimantes ! », rappelle l’un des cadres supérieurs de Stellantis venu de PSA.

En parallèle, Carlos Tavares a coupé les vivres aux concessionnaires, et notamment leurs moyens marketing (rabais, transport des véhicules...). «Lorsque les distributeurs achetaient les modèles sortis d’usine, ils devaient attendre des mois que Stellantis les paie. Cela a pu durer jusqu’à un an. Certains investisseurs de concessions Stellantis ont été en très grandes difficultés », ajoute François Mary, le nouveau président de l’Association des groupements des concessionnaires de marques Stellantis (AGGS). Le patron d’un grand groupe de concessions automobiles avait même donné comme consigne à ses collaborateurs de ne jamais reprendre d’enseigne du groupe Stellantis pour éviter l’enfer vécu par bon nombre d’investisseurs...

Cette politique avait fini par être contre-productive. Peu de gestes commerciaux en concession, prix élevé des véhicules : les clients ont déserté les showrooms. Le «pricing power», ce prix plus élevé que celui des concurrents, justifié selon Carlos Tavares par l’attrait des marques, a cessé de fonctionner. « Aujourd’hui la part de marché de Peugeot qui se maintenait à 18% en France, est passée sous les 14%, se lamente un distributeur. Celles de l’ensemble des marques de Stellantis en France sont maintenant inférieures à celles de PSA avant la fusion ».

Alerte des concessionnaires

Plusieurs représentants de distributeurs automobiles qui avaient l’oreille de la famille Peugeot avaient donné l’alerte ces dernières années. Sans succès. Ils assistent à présent à un revirement spectaculaire. Le nouveau patron de la région Europe élargie, Jean-Philippe Imparato, vieux compagnon de route de Carlos Tavares et dont la fibre commerciale est saluée unanimement, leur a promis de tout mettre en œuvre pour ramener les clients. « La nouvelle équipe a compris que la politique du tout digital et du tout électrique n’était pas tenable», confie François Mary. «Pour faire tourner les usines, ils ont besoin de volumes et ils doivent pouvoir s’appuyer sur nous ! , rappelle un vendeur. Aujourd’hui, le message, c’est plutôt ’Si c’est bon pour le client, faites-le’ ». Au point même de relancer les versions diesel de plusieurs modèles appréciés des professionnels.

Plus généralement, la chasse aux coûts poussée à l’extrême, marque de fabrique de Carlos Tavares, ne semble plus être l’alpha et l’oméga de Stellantis. Au sein du groupe, des voix s’élèvent désormais pour dénoncer ce système de rabotage qui garantissait la fameuse «marge à deux chiffres». Le dirigeant portugais, à l’époque auréolé dans l’industrie, l’avait promise jusqu’à la fin de la décennie. « Ce double digit « sacré » était choquant, confie un cadre supérieur qui a longtemps admiré ce que Carlos Tavares a fait de PSA et d’Opel. Cette obsession s’est reportée sur les fournisseurs avec des délais de paiement insoutenables. En interne, la pratique du « capping », qui limitait le cash utilisé chaque semaine par chaque branche et les mettait en compétition les unes avec les autres, induisait des retards de paiements et des dysfonctionnements chez les fournisseurs. Stellantis était même contraint de payer des pénalités pour cette raison. Cette pratique peut se justifier quand l’entreprise est en grande difficulté, mais cela n’a jamais été le cas chez Stellantis ».

Les coupes claires ont aussi décimé les troupes. La nouvelle direction va-t-elle aussi stopper l’hémorragie des cadres et techniciens, vivement incités sous l’ère Tavares à donner une nouvelle orientation à leur carrière ? Comprendre, quitter le groupe. « Chacun recevait de manière récurrente un e-mail pour contacter sa DRH et prendre connaissance des conditions de départ», rappelle un syndicaliste. Le dernier plan de suppression de postes, déclenché en juillet en France et portant sur 1300 départs dans le cadre d’une rupture conventionnelle collective, a atteint son quota dès le 1er décembre, alors qu’il pouvait rester ouvert jusqu’en août 2025. « À cela s’ajoutent les mesures d’âge pour les seniors», précise Frédéric Lemayitch, le représentant de la CFTC chez Stellantis.

Décentrer l’organisation

Cadres, syndicalistes, ouvriers, expriment une sourde colère face à la perte de compétences liée à tous ces départs. Et font le lien avec la répétition des crises dues aux problèmes de qualité - moteurs PureTech, airbags Takata défaillants...-, jamais pris en compte au juste niveau. « Aujourd’hui, l’entreprise doit se reconfigurer et se recentrer sur ses compétences, espère un ingénieur cadre supérieur, nostalgique de la culture d’excellence. Les choix dictés par la course aux économies ont conduit à des défauts de conception et de qualité vraiment graves». Un cadre du groupe renchérit : « aujourd’hui, il est nécessaire de faire une pause pour éviter que les pertes de compétences compliquent dramatiquement les objectifs des années 2025 et 2026».

Même s’il est encore trop tôt pour mesurer l’ampleur du changement à venir dans les usines et dans les bureaux, les représentants des salariés notent la volonté de décentraliser l’organisation. «Très verticale, elle va s’aplatir, prédit un cadre exécutif de Stellantis. Dorénavant, elle sera gérée par grande région du monde de manière plus autonome, comme c’était le cas chez Fiat-Chrysler auparavant ».

Le prochain directeur général ne sera probablement plus le patron omnipotent qui glaçait son auditoire. « Sous Tavares, c’était le petit doigt sur la couture du pantalon, raconte Frédéric Lemayitch de la CFTC. Il ne savait pas déléguer. Il était craint et donnait l’impression d’aimer être LE boss. Aujourd’hui, la pression s’est relâchée».

Une industrie très concurrentielle

Reste que les inconnues sont nombreuses et que l’automobile est une industrie de forte pression concurrentielle. Le darwinisme cher à l’ancien directeur général ne sortait pas de nulle part. « On ne sait pas trop ce qui se passera lorsque le successeur de Carlos Tavares sera arrivé », souligne Frédéric Lemayitch. La volonté affichée de doper la production en Italie se fera-t-elle au détriment des usines françaises ? L’activité des sites industriels dédiés à l’électrique sera-t-elle revue à la baisse ? Le télétravail généralisé à trois jours par semaine pour les fonctions tertiaires sera-t-il revu à la baisse ?

Aujourd’hui, beaucoup s’interrogent sur les leviers que vont utiliser les actionnaires pour continuer de profiter de la machine à cash que Carlos Tavares avait inventée. Jamais ces derniers n’avaient gagné autant d’argent qu’avec l’ancien patron de PSA. En 2024, plus de 7,7 milliards d’euros auront été distribués en dividendes et rachats d’action. Carlos Tavares avait d’ailleurs programmé de faire mieux encore en 2025 avec un taux de redistribution situé entre 25% et 30%, contre 25% jusqu’alors.

Les détenteurs d’actions Stellantis devront prendre leur mal en patience pour retrouver leur bonne fortune. Mais pas question de voir la profitabilité chuter. Même avec un management moins raide, il faudra encore serrer les coûts. Les actionnaires comptent sur le premier d’entre eux, John Elkann, le représentant d’Exor, pour veiller au grain.

Stellantis: The Elkann Method to Break Away from the Tavares Era
Champagne, “cuddle therapy,” plant visits… At Stellantis, Elkann’s approach is shaking up the post-Tavares era

STORY – The former Portuguese boss gave employees a hard time with his relentless cost-cutting drive. Now, the Agnelli heir has taken the reins. He has ushered in a change of style that comes as a relief to teams.

Sabring champagne in the cafeteria of the research and development center in Vélizy—a first at Stellantis. An event that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks ago, under the austere Carlos Tavares. The 130 senior executives from across Europe who gathered that Friday, December 6, at the request of John Elkann, the new chairman of the “interim executive committee,” could hardly believe their eyes. With this unprecedented gesture and his speech, the grandson of Gianni Agnelli, Fiat’s legendary leader, sought to open a new chapter, following the ouster on December 1 of the Portuguese CEO. John Elkann, who also heads the family holding Exor (the group’s main shareholder) and additionally chairs the board of directors, asked his top executives “never to compromise on the quality of Stellantis products or on relationships with our customers and stakeholders.”

“One of the meeting’s takeaways was to bring calm and serenity back to the group, without changing course,” explains one participant. Calm and serenity: it is a sharp pivot after years of nonstop tension within the group’s fourteen brands (Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Opel, Chrysler, Jeep, Ram, Maserati, etc.). To reinforce the point, John Elkann met with executive teams in every key country of the group—born from the merger of PSA and Fiat-Chrysler—while multiplying visits to historic plants like Rüsselsheim (Germany) for Opel and Mirafiori (Italy) for Fiat. A genuine goodwill tour. Each time, the Agnelli heir delivers positive news. “All plants will remain operational,” he promises, even though many of them are running at a slow pace due to a lack of orders. The change in tone is “astounding.” “It’s happening extremely quickly,” says a senior Stellantis manager.

Relations with governments have also taken on a new tone. Across the continents, John Elkann is holding reassuring meetings with heads of state, while over the past few years distrust of politicians in Italy and the United States had permeated every level of the world’s fourth-largest automaker. People remember the tense exchange in February 2024 between Carlos Tavares and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had approached the Chinese company BYD about investing in Italy—Italy’s way of pressuring Stellantis, the country’s only carmaker, which was accused of not investing enough in Fiat’s homeland. “Those who are flirting with Chinese automakers to invite them to Italy are taking the same path as those who sold Volvo to Geely or MG to another Chinese manufacturer,” Carlos Tavares had retorted sharply.

Wooing Donald Trump

These shifts in tone also hint at deeper fractures. Strategic decisions taken by Carlos Tavares have not been slow to be abandoned by the new management in Europe and the United States, underscoring the doubts and disagreements they had been causing for some time.

The first turnaround: The shining star of electric vehicles in Europe now plans to be more cautious, aligning itself with competitors. After leaving the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) at the end of 2022, Stellantis has now returned to the industry lobby. Like its rival Renault, it is calling for more flexibility in CO₂ emissions regulations, fearing the fines scheduled for late 2025 and aiming to better adapt to a still-weak demand for 100% electric vehicles.

Across the Atlantic, there has also been an about-face. During the U.S. presidential campaign, a standoff arose between Donald Trump, who portrayed himself as the champion of 100% “Made in USA” cars, and Carlos Tavares, who wanted to keep increasing production in Mexico. To show good faith to the new president, John Elkann’s team canceled the plan—right before Christmas—to cut 1,100 jobs at the Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio. Stellantis hopes this will be enough to appease Ohio’s Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, who made his fortune in car dealerships. Moreno, who boasts of his close ties to Donald Trump, went so far as to challenge John Elkann by calling on him to sell Chrysler along with its brands (Jeep, Ram, Dodge, Chrysler) in order to make the carmaker 100% American again.

A Counterproductive Policy

There is also a marked change in policy toward dealerships, which serve as the group’s brand ambassadors to customers. Back at PSA, Carlos Tavares was already convinced that dealers were making too much money at the automaker’s expense. During COVID, he devised a commercial strategy focusing on online sales, cutting distribution costs by about 20%. “But cars are complicated to sell online. It’s not like selling printers!” points out one senior Stellantis executive who came from PSA.

Meanwhile, Carlos Tavares slashed financial support for dealers, including marketing funds (rebates, vehicle transport, etc.). “When dealers bought vehicles coming off the production line, they had to wait months for Stellantis to pay them. In some cases it lasted up to a year. Some Stellantis dealership investors faced huge challenges,” adds François Mary, the new chairman of the Stellantis Brand Dealership Association (AGGS). The head of a large automotive dealership group even told his teams never to take on a Stellantis franchise again to avoid the misery many investors had gone through.

Eventually, this policy became counterproductive. Dealers could hardly offer special deals in showrooms, and car prices rose. Customers simply stopped coming. The “pricing power”—charging more than competitors on the assumption that the brands alone justified higher prices—stopped working. “Peugeot’s market share, which used to hold steady at 18% in France, has fallen below 14%,” laments one dealer. “All Stellantis brands combined now have a lower market share in France than PSA had before the merger.”

Dealers Raise the Alarm

Several dealership representatives with the ear of the Peugeot family had already sounded the alarm in recent years, to no avail. Now they are seeing a remarkable change of direction. The new head of the Expanded Europe region, Jean-Philippe Imparato—an old ally of Carlos Tavares who is widely praised for his commercial expertise—has pledged to do whatever it takes to win customers back. “The new team has realized that a fully digital approach and an all-electric strategy are not feasible,” says François Mary. “To keep the factories running, they need volumes, and they need us!” adds one salesperson. “Today, the message is more like ‘If it’s good for the customer, go for it.’” They have even reintroduced diesel versions of several models favored by professionals.

More generally, relentless cost-cutting—Carlos Tavares’ signature—is no longer Stellantis’s alpha and omega. Inside the group, people are increasingly speaking out against the across-the-board cuts that had secured the revered “double-digit margins.” The Portuguese boss, who was a star in the industry at the time, had pledged to maintain these double-digit profits through the end of the decade. “That sacred ‘double-digit’ target was shocking,” confides a senior executive who long admired Carlos Tavares for what he did at PSA and Opel. “This obsession shifted onto suppliers with untenable payment deadlines. Internally, the ‘capping’ system—limiting the cash each branch could use every week and pitting them against each other—led to payment delays and disrupted supplier operations. Stellantis even had to pay penalties for that. It might make sense if a company is in real trouble, but that was never Stellantis’s situation.”

Putting the Brakes on Job Cuts?

Sweeping cuts have also thinned the ranks. Will the new management stop the exodus of managers and technicians who were strongly encouraged under Tavares to “reorient their careers”—in other words, leave the company? “Everyone regularly received an email inviting them to contact HR to learn about departure terms,” recalls a union representative. The last plan for job cuts, launched in France in July and involving 1,300 departures through a collective mutually agreed termination, reached its target by December 1, even though it could have remained open until August 2025. “On top of that, you also have age-related measures for older workers,” adds Frédéric Lemayitch, the CFTC representative at Stellantis.

Managers, union reps, and factory workers all share a simmering anger over the loss of skills resulting from these departures. They see it tied to repeated quality-related crises—issues with PureTech engines, faulty Takata airbags—that were never properly addressed. “Now, the company needs to restructure and refocus on its core skills,” hopes a senior engineering manager, nostalgic for a culture of excellence. “Cost-cutting led to severe design and quality problems.” Another Stellantis executive agrees: “We need to pause to keep the loss of expertise from endangering our 2025 and 2026 objectives.”

Although it’s too soon to measure the full impact of upcoming changes in the factories and offices, employee representatives note a desire to decentralize. “Highly vertical, the organization will become more horizontal,” predicts a Stellantis executive. “From now on, it will be managed by major world regions with more autonomy, as was the case at Fiat-Chrysler before.”

A Less Omnipotent CEO?

The next CEO likely won’t be the all-powerful boss who sent chills through the ranks. “Under Tavares, people toed the line,” says Frédéric Lemayitch of the CFTC. “He didn’t know how to delegate. He was feared and seemed to enjoy being THE boss. Now, the pressure has eased.”

But the automotive industry remains highly competitive, and many unknowns remain. The Darwinian approach favored by the former CEO was not without basis. “We don’t really know what will happen when Carlos Tavares’s successor arrives,” says Frédéric Lemayitch. Will the stated intention to ramp up production in Italy come at the expense of French plants? Will output at electric-only sites be scaled back? Will remote work—three days a week for office employees—be reduced?

Today, many people are wondering which levers shareholders will use to continue benefiting from the cash-generating machine that Carlos Tavares built. Under the former PSA boss, they never made as much money. In 2024, over €7.7 billion was paid out via dividends and share buybacks. Carlos Tavares had even planned more for 2025, targeting a payout ratio of 25% to 30%, compared to 25% up to now.

Shareholders will have to be patient if they hope to return to such prosperity. But there’s no question of allowing profitability to plummet. Even with a less rigid management style, costs will still have to be kept in check. The shareholders are counting on their chief representative, John Elkann of Exor, to keep a close watch.

Regulator has been accused of piling pressure on companies with a flurry of rulemaking

Accounting firms are trying to block new rules that would reveal how many hours are being worked by auditors of US public companies, and how much training and experience they have, saying the information risks being misinterpreted by investors.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates the profession, approved the new disclosure requirements in November but they cannot go into force unless rubber stamped by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has received a flurry of letters in opposition.

Shareholders are typically asked to ratify the appointment of a company’s auditor each year and investor groups have long advocated for standardised information to compare firms and inform their vote, according to the PCAOB.

A company’s auditor will have to disclose how much of the work is being done by senior partners versus more junior staff and how many years of experience the people in the team have, including experience auditing companies in that industry. The firm must also disclose the overall workload of senior professionals involved in a company’s audit, along with how much annual training is being given, among the eight different metrics.

Accounting firms say the metrics tell investors little about whether an audit is being done well and are likely to be misunderstood without additional context.

“The value of the metrics is speculative and may in fact confuse investors and other stakeholders, rather than benefit them,” Deloitte wrote in a letter to the SEC.

CohnReznick wrote: “No two firms are identical as are no two issuer audits.”

Several accounting firms argued disclosing the metrics to the audit committee of a company’s board would be better than making them public for shareholders because that is the committee that ultimately appoints the auditor.

The new disclosure rules are the latest PCAOB initiative to run into opposition from audit firms, which say the agency has become politicised and dismissive of their concerns under Joe Biden’s administration.

SEC chair Gary Gensler has said he will step down when Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20, after which the regulator will be controlled by Republican commissioners who have signalled similar displeasure with the PCAOB’s rulemaking process.

Deloitte’s letter to the SEC said the speed with which the PCAOB is pushing through new rules was piling new costs on to audit firms and causing “stress in the system”, while the American Institute of CPAs, which represents the profession, said small and midsize firms would be tempted to stop auditing public companies all together.

The deadline for submitted comments on the new disclosure rules passed on Thursday but the SEC is yet to indicate when it will vote on whether to approve them.

With the U.S. and China intensifying demand for critical metals and minerals, host countries are making hostile plays for more of the profits

Neil Warburton was finishing up his breakfast of porridge and local honey when the armed soldiers converged.

The Australian veteran mining executive had flown to southern Ethiopia in 2023 to check on progress at his lithium mine. One of the largest undeveloped lithium projects in the world, it was supposed to start production in late 2024, selling spodumene concentrate that would end up in batteries for electric vehicles and other products.

That plan has gone seriously—and perhaps irreversibly—awry.

The mine, with around $2 billion at stake, is among a number of projects around the world caught in an increasingly tense geopolitical struggle for valuable metals and minerals. Two world superpowers—the U.S. and China—are bankrolling much of the investment to power their economies, which in turn is leading developing countries where the mines are located to push for a greater slice of the profits.

At about 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 16, 2023, Warburton was dining with the mine site manager and geologists when an army colonel arrived and ordered all expats off the site, citing a security issue.

Warburton spied machine guns cradled in soldiers’ arms and mounted on white pickup trucks. Dozens of soldiers flanked the dozen or so expats, then drove them away from the mine to a nearby town.

“It was scary,” said Warburton, executive chairman of an Abyssinian Group company. “They were army soldiers with automatic weapons. And if they say move, you move.”

A unit of the Abyssinian Group had been exploring the area since 2021 in a joint venture with a state government-backed mining company. Under the terms of the agreement, the Abyssinian Group would bear the costs of the exploration and get 51% of the project’s profits, with the rest going to its local partner.

But now the government was asking for cash outside the bounds of the agreement.

Abyssinian offered to pay tens of millions of dollars to resolve the spat if the government satisfied certain conditions, but its exploration license was revoked in August. In October, its country director, Ali Hussein Mohammed, was summoned by the government to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, ostensibly to continue the discussions. Instead, he was taken to a detention center, where he remains.

The government says Mohammed mined lithium and exported it without proper authorization, a claim his lawyer and the Abyssinian Group deny. His lawyer says the detention is unlawful as no formal charges have been brought against him.

“This situation is extremely frustrating,” said Stephen Miller, an Abyssinian Group executive, who added that the company had been invited to deploy its money and expertise in Ethiopia in part to benefit the country. “We’re now being pushed to one side. This is a unicorn of a project.”

The Abyssinian Group’s experience is just one of many examples of resource nationalism that have cropped up around the world, from Mexico to Mongolia to parts of Africa. While host governments and miners have sometimes been at odds in recent decades, lawyers and executives say they have never seen arrests and nationalist actions at this level.

Risk analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft said last month that 72 of the 198 countries it tracks in a resource nationalism index have recorded a significant increase in interventionist policies and protectionism over the past five years.

Helaina Matza, a U.S. State Department official, said while countries should expect fair investments into their mining sectors, the U.S. is concerned about the “increasingly aggressive actions” toward Western investment in some markets.

Investors worry about pouring big sums of cash into mines that can cost billions of dollars to build, only for governments to later shift the goal posts, said John Ciampaglia, senior managing partner of precious metals and critical materials-focused Sprott. Toronto-based Sprott manages roughly $33 billion in assets.

It is common for governments to try to wring more from miners when commodity prices rocket and fatten company profits. And it is now generally understood that a larger percentage of benefits should flow to local communities, many in countries that were previously exploited for their raw materials.

These days, many governments are strapped for cash after borrowing surged during the pandemic, and are looking for ways to replenish their coffers.

In addition, “host countries are seeing just how important these minerals are to the U.S. and China,” said Jeffery Commission, a director at Burford Capital, a legal finance company that has funded companies involved in mining disputes.

Yet industry participants say there is a difference between bilaterally rejiggering mining rights and a government using intimidation to wrest more control.

The tactics being used are different than in the past and are “borderline criminal at this stage,” said Damien Nyer, an international disputes partner at law firm White & Case. “People getting arrested and held as hostages, as bargaining chips—it’s something I haven’t seen in my career.”

Sprott’s Ciampaglia said his team has become much more cautious backing companies in some places, particularly in West Africa.

Panama stunned the global copper market little more than a year ago when a court ruling forced the closure of First Quantum Minerals’ Cobre Panama mine, which accounted for roughly 1.5% of the world’s copper production.

“Cobre Panama is a really good example,” said Ciampaglia. “You thought you were investing in a copper mine in Panama but, in reality, you were investing in a political party in Panama.”

In Mali, the Russia-allied military government has recently netted almost a quarter-billion dollars in payments from international mining companies including Canada’s Barrick Gold.

Mali last month issued an arrest warrant for Barrick Chief Executive Mark Bristow. In September, it briefly detained four Barrick employees, releasing them only after the company agreed to a payment of $85 million to “resolve outstanding disputes.” Since then, several employees have been imprisoned on unfounded charges, Barrick said.

Barrick said that gold shipments have been blocked and, if that continues, it will be forced to suspend its operations in the country.

Australia’s Resolute Mining recently agreed to pay the Malian government $160 million after authorities detained the company’s chief executive and two other employees for nearly two weeks.

​The Democratic Republic of Congo recently froze some assets of commodity giant Glencore amid a royalties dispute. The freeze was lifted in recent months, a person familiar with the matter said.

Miners are turning to international arbitration to get compensation for the seizure of their mines or licenses. Since the pandemic, mining cases have exploded at a division of the World Bank that oversees investment disputes.

The Abyssinian Group and Barrick are submitting cases to that body. The Abyssinian Group will petition for a multibillion-dollar claim, corresponding to the value it places on its lithium reserve, people familiar with the situation said.

Miners have been heartened by outcomes in some recent cases. Bronwyn Barnes, executive chair of Australian exploration company Indiana Resources, filed a case in 2020 after Tanzania changed its mining code, yanked her company’s operating license and seized the spot where a potential nickel mine would go.

The company was awarded more than $100 million to cover its sunk costs on the project. Tanzania and Indiana Resources last year agreed to a settlement of $90 million.

Government officials in Ethiopia, Mali and Tanzania didn’t return requests for comment.

Abyssinian’s Warburton spent chunks of his earlier career working on projects in Africa, including in Mali. The lithium project in Ethiopia was intended to be the swan song of a more than four-decade career.

“Certainly, I’m never going back there,” he said.

Fresh look at archives unearthed Nazi-linked accounts discovered by bank in 1990s but never disclosed to investigators

Switzerland thought it came to terms with its Nazi-assisting past after harrowing probes in the 1990s led its two largest banks to pay more than $1 billion restitution to Holocaust victims. Documents unearthed in bank archives show it might have been at least in part a whitewash.

A cache of client files stamped “American blacklist,” a designation for those financing or trading with Nazis or Axis partners, was recently found by independent investigators probing Credit Suisse, one of Switzerland’s biggest banks and now part of UBS UBS 3.76%increase; green up pointing triangle.

The investigators, who studied dusty ledgers and pored over microfilm that hadn’t been part of earlier reviews into the dark chapter, found something else, too: signs of a coverup.

In the 1990s, two panels studied Swiss banks’ World War II-era activities after anger erupted over Holocaust victims’ unreleased funds.

But the investigators now taking a fresh look found Credit Suisse withheld crucial information.

They located several Nazi-linked accounts that were discovered by the bank in the 1990s but never disclosed to investigators. They also turned up new details of an operational account controlled by high-ranking Nazi SS officers and a Swiss intermediary that was allegedly used to move and store looted assets.

The findings came to light in a probe overseen by an independent ombudsman, Neil Barofsky. The former U.S. prosecutor, who is a partner at law firm Jenner & Block, was hired by Credit Suisse in 2021 after the Simon Wiesenthal Center found information on possible Nazi clients that hadn’t previously been disclosed.

The Senate Budget Committee got involved two years ago, when Credit Suisse fired Barofsky from the probe. Bank executives played down what he had found and felt he had overstepped lines it wanted around the investigation. The committee has jurisdiction over the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, which seeks to secure compensation for Nazi-era wrongs.

Barofsky was reinstated in late 2023, following UBS’s emergency rescue of Credit Suisse. In a December 2024 letter to the Senate, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Barofsky said Credit Suisse and new owner UBS have fully opened their archives and have assigned more than 50 people to work on the probe.

“The investigation has identified scores of individuals and legal entities connected to Nazi atrocities whose relationships with Credit Suisse had either been previously unidentified, or for which the relationship had been partially identified but the full nature of the bank’s involvement has not yet been reported publicly,” Barofsky wrote in the letter.

“UBS is committed to contributing to a fulsome accounting of Nazi-linked legacy accounts previously held at predecessor banks of Credit Suisse,” said a bank spokesperson.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley, (R., Iowa) spearheaded the effort in the Senate. “Credit Suisse hid additional evidence of Nazi ties for years, and even tried to conceal information from our congressional investigation,” Grassley said.

Recent photos taken by a visitor to one of the bank’s archives in Zurich shows the scale of the task: rooms full of pallets of boxes stacked from floor to ceiling, and an array of old ledgers, computers and hard-drive disks all storing client records.

Buried in storage were around 3,600 boxes from the “Inf department” containing information about clients, including ones who were on the U.S. wartime blacklist for furthering the Nazi cause.

Barofsky described the Inf department files as akin to “know your customer” details that banks keep on their clients. A preliminary search against 99 known Nazis and affiliates produced 13 name matches. Numerous files bore the American blacklist stamp, he said, which his team hadn’t seen before in other Credit Suisse archives.

Some portions of the Inf department files were included in earlier reviews but were never scanned, indexed or systematically incorporated into those probes, Barofsky said in the letter to Congress. That work is now ongoing.

While conducting the new probe, which included interviews with former bank employees who worked on the 1990s research, Barofsky found indications the bank covered up its role by not always sharing what it knew.

Internal comments by bank executives in the 1990s on one of the panel’s draft reports said the report was “rather sanitized,” but best left as is. Credit Suisse’s general approach to outside investigations was to share only requested information and not offer additional insights, Barofsky said his team was told.

Key information and relevant accounts weren’t shared then with the outside panels, including information about the account controlled by officers of the Nazi SS—Adolf Hitler’s elite paramilitary unit—and a Swiss intermediary. The businesses that used the accounts promoted the regime’s economic aims, seizing businesses from Jewish owners and relying on forced labor at concentration camps.

A registry card for the SS-linked account was found in the 1990s and was flagged to higher-ups, according to the former employees and documents and emails that were discovered in the new probe. Credit Suisse as recently as April 2023 said bank historians hadn’t previously associated the registry card with the account in question, including in the 1990s reviews.

When asked by one of the panels in 2001 about the account, Credit Suisse said it had no documents indicating a business relationship with the SS holding company, leading the panel to conclude documents must have been destroyed.

After outcry in the mid-1990s over Holocaust victims’ missing assets, a group overseen by Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, sent auditors deep into the banks’ files to find dormant or looted accounts.

A second group, assembled by the Swiss parliament and headed by historian Jean-François Bergier, trawled through bank archives to study Switzerland’s Nazi-financing.

The two panels’ main findings were that Swiss bankers routinely turned a blind eye to Nazi theft of Jewish assets during the war and often obstructed families’ later efforts to reclaim their money. Neither review claimed to encompass all wartime accounts or to give a definitive result.

In the 1990s probes, Credit Suisse identified 14 likely Nazi clients. UBS said it found one account for a former Reichsbank president and another opened by an SS officer’s widow decades after the war.

The two banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion to Jewish families who had been denied money in Swiss accounts and to surviving slave laborers or their heirs. Many Jewish organizations supported the settlement at the time.

Barofsky told the Senate his team of investigators expects to issue a final report around early 2026.

SpaceX is significantly upping the ante of its Starship test flight program, with the next rocket launch expected to demonstrate payload deployment for the first time.

The payload in question will be 10 Starlink “simulators” that will be similar in size and weight to the next-gen satellites SpaceX plans to use Starship to deploy in space. These model spacecraft will travel on the same trajectory as the upper stage, which is also called Starship, and splash down in the Indian Ocean.

The operational version of these satellites, called V3, will likely be the first real payloads Starship flies. Indeed, bringing Starship online is the linchpin to SpaceX’s plans to more rapidly deploy its Starlink satellite constellation and reduce the costs per satellite launched. SpaceX currently launches Starlink using its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, but the next-gen V3 satellites are expected to be much heavier than the current V2 Mini spacecraft. Thanks to Starship’s incredible payload capacity, SpaceX has said it plans to deploy 60 V3 satellites per Starship launch, which will add 60 terabits per second of capacity to the Starlink network.

Per satellite, that equals out to more than 10 times the downlink and 24 times the uplink capacity compared to the V2 Mini satellites.

In a blog post ahead of the seventh test launch, which is expected to take place later this month, the company said it is also introducing a slew of upgrades to the rocket. These include improvements to the propulsion system, avionics, and heat shield, that SpaceX says will boost reliability and performance. During this test, SpaceX will also attempt to “catch” the Super Heavy booster, a feat that the company accomplished for the first time during the fifth test in October.

A lot is riding on Tesla’s autonomous-driving software, and the company appears to be making progress.

Tesla believes it will be able to launch a self-driving robotaxi service in late 2025. Estimates of how much that service could be worth range from hundreds of billions of dollars to several trillion.

While Tesla hasn’t completed a truly self-driving cab ride, the company is constantly improving its driver-assistance products with the help of artificial-intelligence computing. The latest iteration was widely released in December.

Self-driving technology is critical to Tesla stock, so Barron’s took the latest version of the electric-vehicle maker’s Full-Self Driving product out for a spin to help investors not exposed to the technology understand the state of play. The new version is impressive.

Barron’s has tested Tesla’s FSD product several times before. The first review was in September 2023, when I wrote that the car drove “like a mash of a teenager with a learner’s permit and an octogenarian.” It was slow and steady, but unsure about all the situations encountered in daily driving.

FSD worked, but it wasn’t nearly as good as an experienced human.

The car kept improving with each updated version of the software, though it still requires human oversight 100% of the time. New versions tested in 2024 were able to handle turns and intersections that gave the car trouble in the past.

Now there is FSD version 13.2, which is available to owners whose vehicles have the required hardware. Its enhancements include “reduced photon-to-control latency,” whatever that means. Supervised self-driving starting from a parking spot is another innovation—a forward step that is easier to understand.

Version 13.2 is really good. The number of times I have to take over on the road is down substantially, and the driving is significantly better. FSD is starting to feel like a solid human driver. It navigates parked vehicles, construction, difficult left turns, speed bumps, and pedestrians with a surprising level of expertise, though I am still paying attention 100% of the time.

Others have noticed something similar. “Lucky version 13,” wrote Truist analyst William Stein in a recent report. “Our first, second, and third reviews of this technology each revealed material weaknesses. Our recent test drive of FSD v13 was more impressive, requiring no interventions. Still, imperfections remain obvious and prevent us from recommending its use.”

He rates Tesla shares Hold and has a $360 price target for the stock, which closed Friday at $410.44.

Stein sounds more skeptical than Barron’s, though FSD certainly isn’t perfect. I can’t project when it will be much better than a human driver.

Elon Musk believes that will happen in early 2025. “That is just, unvarnished, our internal estimate,” the Tesla CEO said on his company’s third-quarter earnings conference call in October. “That’s not sandbagging or anything else. Our internal estimate is Q2 of next year to be safer than humans.”

FSD version 13.2 gives investors some hope that Musk, who is famously optimistic about self-driving timelines, will be right this time.

He needs to be. Through Friday trading, Tesla stock was up roughly 70% since the company’s Oct. 10 robotaxi event. Those gains added more than $500 billion in market value.

Expectations that the robotaxi service is close, and will be profitable, are running high. How FSD advances throughout 2025 will go a long way toward determining how Tesla stock will do in the new year.

Why Regulating Alcohol Industry Is Tall Order Even After Surgeon General’s Cancer Warning

In an advisory released Friday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy named alcohol use a “leading preventable cause” of cancer behind tobacco and obesity, noting that alcohol contributes to nearly 100,000 U.S. cancer cases and roughly 20,000 cancer deaths each year—higher than the 13,500 deaths caused by drunken driving.

Shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the maker of Budweiser; Molson Coors, the maker of Miller Lite; Constellation Brands, the distributor of imported Mexican lager like Corona and Modelo Especial; Sam Adams maker Boston Beer; and Brown-Forman, producer of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, tumbled on Friday following the surgeon general’s advisory.

Murthy is calling for a series of actions to increase public awareness of the health risk, including updates to the warning labels on alcoholic beverages. Alcoholic products already are subject to labels that carry the risks of drinking during pregnancy, while driving, or operating machinery.

Introducing more alarming labels would require approval from Congress, and it would be a challenging task. Alcohol companies and trade groups spend millions of dollars each year on lobbying to push for regulations that favor the industry.

Look no further than the tobacco industry. Cigarettes are required to have text-based warnings in bold, capitalized letters on the side of the packages. The Food and Drug Administration had tried to implement graphic warning labels for cigarette packages and advertisements like those in many other countries.

But tobacco companies fiercely opposed the move on the basis of freedom of speech, and they won in federal court more than a decade ago, preventing the graphic warning labels.

In 2023, total lobbying spending for the beer, wine, and liquor industry reached $29 million, roughly the same as the tobacco industry, according to research group OpenSecrets.

Another way to curb alcohol consumption would be to charge higher taxes that would make alcohol more expensive. Alcoholic beverages are subject to significantly higher tax rates compared to most other food and non-alcoholic beverages.

The federal alcohol excise tax, collected from manufacturers and importers of alcoholic beverages, totals $10 billion to $12 billion each year. The rates for pure alcoholic content of spirits, wine, and beer are 21 cents, 6 cents, and 9 cents per ounce, respectively.

Despite inflation and the rising prices of alcohol, those rates have remained largely unchanged since 1991, meaning the share of alcohol tax relative to the size of the economy actually has declined over time.

In 1940, alcohol excise taxes made up around 10% of federal revenue. By 2022, it accounted for only 0.2% of total federal receipts, according to a report in September 2024 from the Congressional Research Service.

In recent years, several states have implemented changes to their alcohol excise taxes, either increasing rates or considering reforms to address public health concerns and generate additional revenue. But resistance from the industry has always been strong.

Some states, such as Tennessee, Minnesota, and cities like Chicago and Seattle, also impose a special sales tax on alcoholic beverages in addition to the general sales tax, collected directly from consumers.

Last year, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed a 34% to 36% per gallon increase in taxes on alcohol sales, but faced significant opposition from bars and restaurant owners, who said they already were struggling with rising costs and thin margins since the Covid pandemic.

It could be tough to impose stricter regulations on alcohol consumption, which is deeply ingrained in many cultures and often associated with celebrations and tradition. Overly restrictive measures could lead to public backlash and economic losses.

While tobacco is widely regarded as harmful even in small amounts, moderate consumption of alcohol often has been considered to have a low health risk. Some studies even suggest potential health benefits from red wine, although the credibility of such findings has been widely debated.

Prohibition during the 1930s in the U.S., when the production, transportation, and sale of alcohol was banned nationwide, has left regulators with cautionary tales. The period saw a proliferation of illegal bars, corruption among law enforcement officials, and a rise of organized crime.

Berkshire Hathaway continued its purchases of Verisign in recent days, buying about $4 million of the company that provides Internet domain registry and other services.

The small recent buys, approximately 20,000 shares, were made at an average price of nearly $205 a share, according to a form 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday.

Berkshire now owns 13.3 million shares of Verisign, a roughly 14% stake worth about $2.7 billion. Berkshire has bought about 500,000 shares since mid-December, after largely being out of the market for the stock since 2014.

The purchases may have been done by Ted Weschler or Todd Combs, two investment managers who work with CEO Warren Buffett in running Berkshire’s $300 billion equity portfolio. The pair run about 10% of it, with Buffett handling the rest. Combs and Weschler tend to hold smaller positions of under $3 billion

Berkshire now has bought the stock for 12 straight trading sessions, but some of the daily buys have been small, including just about 1,600 shares on Tuesday.