Fiat, UAW Trust to Bargain Hard about Chrysler Stake

Fiat SpA and the United Auto Workers union's retiree healthcare trust are likely to face tough negotiations about the trust's sale of its 41.5% stake in Chrysler Group LLC to the Italian carmaker, Bloomberg News reports.

Fiat needs to obtain that stake to gain full control of the U.S. carmaker and access to its more than $12 billion in cash. The healthcare trust wants to divest as soon as possible its shares in privately held Chrysler, which can't be sold on any stock market. Bloomberg notes that each party is aware of the other's eagerness to complete the deal.

Chrysler is obliged to begin talks in early 2013 about buying out the trust. Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has said those negotiations will probably start late this year. Analysts tell Bloomberg the trust's stake is worth an estimated $6 billion.

The bargaining will pit the canny Marchionne who acquired 58.5% of the U.S. carmaker for less than $2 billion against Erickson Perkins, a savvy former analyst who became the UAW trust's representative to the Chrysler board in June.

Perkins left Wall Street in 1999 to become a consultant to labor unions. He was an advisor to the UAW's Ford bargaining team in 2007 when the healthcare trust was created. Perkins now heads the union's strategic research department, which gathers information to support organizing and bargaining.