FPT Industrial under Tata Review?

FPT Industrial and Tata, will this be the pairing of summer 2025? When we crossed the threshold of Wall Street in September 2019, on the occasion of CNH Industrial Capital Markets Day, we couldn’t have known who the groom would be, but the fact that the operation was preparatory to new nuptials certainly didn’t surprise us. Let’s start with a certainty: Iveco is the smallest heavy-duty automotive manufacturer in the European landscape. FPT is part of the Iveco Group. The announcement of a possible marriage is not surprising; it would be an almost necessary act. Less clear is the identity of the prospective groom.

Among the various Eastern suitors, will Tata be the one to win FPT Industrial’s “yes”

The advances made to Iveco and FPT Industrial have been widely discussed, and Tata is certainly not the first name to emerge among the so-called “Asian tigers.” It was just four years ago, in the winter, when the Italian Government used its Golden Power to repel the assault from Chinese FAW. For about a year now, Hyundai has been the trump card that so-called insiders consider in pole position to win the truck-bus-industrial engine triangulation from Viale Puglia in Turin.

The logic behind this operation is strategic and impacts the world of on-road applications. Iveco could prove to be too fragile a vase among aggressive and often interconnected ones (just think of the agreement between Volvo and Daimler, known as CellCentric, and Traton’s intra-group synergies). For Tata, or whoever it may be, it would be a golden opportunity to land on the European continent with a tested and widespread sales and service network. And for FPT Industrial?

Tata is an old acquaintance of the Agnelli family, also due to the friendship between Ratan Tata and Giovanni Agnelli. Speaking of engines, the Multijet is at the heart of a partnership and local production agreement, specifically in Tata’s plants in India. And what do industrial engines have to do with it? Could FPT Industrial be spun off and sold separately, or would it remain linked to the parent company, being the creator of the powertrains under the hoods of commercial vehicles (Sofim, NEF, and Cursor Series)? Could the e-plant perhaps be enticing, which currently faces market reservations about the electrification of industrial applications but could find new, abundant life in the Indian domestic market, spurred by New Delhi’s incentives?

It’s too early for conjectures. It’s certainly not new that the Agnelli-Elkann family intends to rid itself of the automotive manufacturing burden, as demonstrated by the Stellantis operation. Let’s be content to take one step at a time, awaiting a reply from Exor, which controls the Turin-based group.