Detroit suburbs beckon Fiat executives with $1,595 sandals

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Should Fiat take over Chrysler LLC as planned, an estimated 100 to 200 Italian executives are expected to relocate to Michigan within 18 months to staff the automaker’s headquarters.

Some people in birmingham, Michigan, can't wait for the Italians to take over Chrysler LLC.

Karen Daskas, owner of a women's fashion shop called Tender, said she carries Chrissie Morris high-heeled sandals - original price $1,595; now $795.50 - that might appeal to Italian expatriates from Fiat SpA. A few doors away, jeweller Gary Astreins said that "new blood" should bring new jobs to an ailing economy. Next year, students at a local public high school may be able to study Italian.

"I'm preparing to work for the relocation of Fiat's executives," said Carolyn Bowen-Keating of Weir Manuel Realtors in Birmingham. "I'm organising a presentation of our services at the Italian consulate in Detroit."

Bowen-Keating, 57, is trying to win business from the expected arrival of executives from Turin-based Fiat, which would control Chrysler following federal court approval of a sale. Chrysler is based in another Detroit suburb, Auburn Hills.

Should the acquisition go as planned, 100 to 200 executives may relocate to Michigan within 18 months, according to Gerald C Meyers, a professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and a former chairman of American Motors Corp.

A Fiat spokesman, Gualberto Ranieri, declined to comment on how many employees might move.

Chances are those managers will live in or near Birmingham, population 20,000, if the housing choices of other car industry executives are any guide.

During his almost two-year tenure as Chrysler's chief executive officer, Robert Nardelli used to stay in Birmingham at the Townsend Hotel. Rick Wagoner, General Motors Corp's former chief executive officer, lives in the city. His successor, Fritz Henderson, lives a mile away in Bloomfield Hills. Daimler AG CEO Dieter Zetsche lived in Bloomfield Township when he ran the US operations of DaimlerChrysler.

Birmingham is in Oakland County, where much of Detroit's middle class moved after the city's riots of 1967, said Robin Boyle, professor of urban planning at Wayne State University in Detroit. Birmingham's downtown is about 10 miles (16km) northwest of Detroit, and is within 20 miles of the headquarters of GM, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler.

"The place is very green and beautiful and conveniently located for those working in the auto sector," said Stefano Aversa, the Florentine co-president of restructuring firm AlixPartners LLP. "The reputation of Detroit and its surroundings is much worse than it deserves."

Aversa has lived in Turin and Bloomfield Hills; he said his favorite Italian restaurant in the Detroit area is Il Posto in Southfield.

As the worst recession since the Great Depression pushed Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy, the state's unemployment rate reached 12.9 percent in April - the highest in the US, while national unemployment stood at 8.9 percent, according to data from the Labour Department. Since its peak employment in June 2000, Michigan has lost 520,000 jobs, 65 percent of them in manufacturing.

Oakland County has suffered, too. In 2000, it was the twentieth-wealthiest county in the United States, according to commerce department data. By 2007, the most recent year for which data is available, Oakland had dropped to 48th place.

Astreins, the jeweller, said that around March of that year he noticed a troubling change in his business. Customers began coming in to sell him their gold.

"In my 35 years in business I have only bought gold during the oil crisis in the ‘70s and during the first banking crisis in the early ‘90s," Astreins, 57, said. Both times, the gold- buying business "faded when the economy rebounded," he said.

Michigan has experience with European car executives moving in. Renault SA of France bought American Motors in the late 1970s, for example, and Germany's Volkswagen AG had its United States headquarters in Auburn Hills before relocating last year to Herndon, Virginia.

Most recently, German carmaker Daimler bought Chrysler in 1998 for $36bn. The combined company lasted until August 2007, when Cerberus Capital Management LP bought 80 percent of Chrysler for $7.4bn.

The Detroit area already has a global flavour, said Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management of the University of Toronto. He said an Italian influx would only make the region more cosmopolitan.

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