This coming week will be an important one for Fiat, as tomorrow, all their temporarily closed plants will reopen after the extended Christmas break, while at the weekend GM and Fiat executives will once more meet to discuss further the 'put' option.

Fiat's major factories, as well as the joint GM-Fiat 'Powertrain' facilities, all will resume working tomorrow, after multi-week holiday period shutdowns. With more than 26,000 staff returning to work, full production expected to have commenced by the middle of the coming week. 

The sprawling Mirafiori plant in Turin, as well as the Melfi factory, have been closed since December 27th, while the threatened Sicilian assembly facility at Termini Imerese has been on temporary shut down since December 20th.

Fiat have been taking advantage of government redundancy payment assistance funding to part pay workers during the recent shutdowns. However today the Minister for Labour Roberto Maroni confirmed that the government would not be financially assisting with Fiat's recovery plans. "To help with financial intervention is excluded by European (competition) rules," Maroni told the ANSA news agency. "We couldn't do it even if we wanted to."

At the same time, top GM and Fiat executives are preparing to meet each other as the first exercise date for the infamous 'put' option, due to take effect on 24th January, looms ever closer.

This highly-contested option offers the Fiat Group the right to force GM to purchase the remaining 90 percent of the Auto Division that they do not already own.
   

GM counter that changes in the financial structure of Fiat, which saw their original stake diluted during last year's capital injection plan, as well as the sale of core assets, including the Fidis finance arm, have negated the validity of the option.

Back on 14th December, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne flew to a secret meeting with GM's boss Rick Wagoner, in Friedrichshafen, a town on the Swiss-German border, as the pressure over the controversial option rose to fever pitch.

The pair, along with a group of senior managers from both companies, chose the town on lake Constance, to avoid intense attention which was focused on their original location in Zurich, a quarterly 'steering committee' meeting of their Powertrain joint venture.

A breakdown in the negotiations between the two companies at that meeting saw a 'mediation' period triggered, an action that specifies the two CEO's must meet up again within twenty working days. They were planning to meet up this coming Wednesday, 12th January, but the get-together is now likely to be pushed back to the weekend with another secret location on the cards.