How did Cerberus win?
The recent sale of Chrysler Group to private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management marks the end of DaimlerChrysler’s (DCX, news, msgs) troubled nine-year marriage, with the German conglomerate, maker of Mercedes-Benz autos, dumping for $7.4 billion a unit it originally purchased for $36 billion in what was originally called a “merger of equals.” But the man who helped devise the doomed trans-Atlantic merger back in 1998 now stands to make a fortune from the breakup. Former DaimlerChrysler CEO Juergen Schrempp could end up with $134 million from the Chrysler sale, German business daily Handelslatt reported, thanks to the stock options Schrempp owns in the auto maker. The Chrysler sale is expected to be completed between July 1 and Sept. 30 of this year. Disgruntled shareholders had been pushing DaimlerChrysler to unload its U.S. arm after the parent company reported a $1.5 billion loss for 2006. But frustration was nothing new to shareholders: Shares of the stock jumped nearly 10% on
