DETROIT, March 21 (UPI) -- Italian automaker Fiat will not assume any government debt incurred by U.S. carmaker Chrysler LLC, the companies say.
Chrysler had earlier claimed that Fiat would assume 35 percent of the debt it would owe to the U.S. government as part of a proposed alliance between the companies, a deal that is conditioned on U.S. President Barack Obama's auto task force approving Chrysler's $5 billion loan request, The Detroit Free Press reported Saturday.
But in a statement issued Friday, Fiat denied that it would be responsible for any of Chrysler's government debt, and Chrysler later agreed, resolving what the newspaper said was a brief misunderstanding between the two automakers.
Randy Paschke, an accounting professor at Wayne State University, told the Free Press the dispute was a "semantic one" that isn't surprising because of the cultural and language differences between the Italians and their American counterparts.
