Former Stellantis chief executive Carlos Tavares received a €23mn pay package in 2024 and a €12mn severance deal for his sudden resignation in December following a sharp deterioration in the carmaker’s performance.
The 2024 pay package, revealed in the annual report for the owner of the Peugeot, Fiat and Jeep brands, amounts to a significant drop on Tavares’s 2023 pay deal of €36.5mn, which was among the highest in the auto sector. Sliding profits meant that he missed out on several performance-based milestones.
His fixed salary of €2mn remained unchanged for last year but his variable pay of €20.5mn and his post-retirement benefit of €500,000 were significantly lower compared with 2023. The annual report was published overnight on Thursday.
The Financial Times reported in the days after Tavares’s resignation that his exit pay deal would be significantly below that paid in 2023, because of the company’s poor performance over the year.
The severance package includes a €2mn payment in line with the law in the Netherlands, where the international group is incorporated. It also includes €10mn in milestone pay based on long-term performance and 800,000 shares, worth €9.82mn at Friday’s share price. He will receive the shares in January 2026. But Tavares missed out on a further €10mn milestone payment and also forfeited 1.2mn shares, the annual report stated.
Tavares and the other executive leadership of the company also received no annual bonus because of the company’s declining performance, according to the report.
In results published this week, Stellantis said it made a net loss of €127mn for the second half of 2024 and published a weaker-than-expected forecast for 2025 profits.
Tavares led the former Peugeot-CSA group through the 2021 merger with Fiat-Chrysler that formed the current Stellantis group.
Since December, chair John Elkann has assumed interim leadership of the carmaker. The company intends to appoint a permanent replacement chief executive by the end of the first half of 2025.
Under Elkann, Stellantis has sought to repair relations with governments, dealers and suppliers that had become strained under Tavares.
It has made a push to accelerate the reduction of inventories at US dealerships, in preparation for the launch of new car models. But the company is heavily exposed if US President Donald Trump goes ahead with imposing additional tariffs against imports from Mexico and Canada starting next week.
Shares have fallen 10 per cent since Stellantis reported results on Wednesday morning, following the company’s conservative guidance for 2025 and renewed threats of tariffs from the Trump administration.
Elkann said on Wednesday that the board and search committee had reviewed “excellent” internal and external candidates and that the company needed a new chief executive who could work “in a unified way” with the organisation and its stakeholders.
But analysts said the group’s outlook remained difficult with little room for further costs cuts.
“The worst may be behind, but the recovery is likely to be slow,” HSBC analyst Michael Tyndall said, adding that there was “little tangible evidence” of success for its aggressive new model launches.
Stellantis’s pay policy will be subject to a vote at its annual general meeting in April. The company’s 2023 policy was approved by 70 per cent of shareholders, with the company’s board noting that remuneration was “a complex and sensitive issue for shareholders and stakeholders”.
