By Alessandra Galloni
VENICE, Italy (Reuters) - A planned initial public offering of luxury sports car maker Ferrari will not happen before Oct. 12, its owner Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (MI:FCHA) (N:FCAU) said, adding the delay was due to tax issues.
Fiat Chrysler (FCA) initially said the sale of 10 percent of its Ferrari unit would take place in the first half of 2015 but later pushed the date back to the third quarter of this year.
Speaking to reporters in Venice on Friday, FCA Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said the share offer could not happen before Oct. 12 for tax reasons he was not originally aware of.
He said a full year needed to pass between the creation of parent FCA - which made its debut on Wall Street on October 13, 2014 - and any additional listing.
Shares in FCA extended their slide to fall more than 4 percent after news of the delay, before paring losses to close down 3.3 percent.
The listing is part of a plan to spin off Ferrari and distribute FCA's remaining stake to its shareholders.
Fiat took management control of Chrysler in 2009 after the American carmaker emerged from bankruptcy and completed its buyout of the company this year.
Last year, it combined all of its businesses under Dutch-registered FCA, which has a British financial domicile and a small London headquarters, with operations centres in Turin and Detroit.
Marchionne also said he could stay at the helm of FCA beyond the completion of a business plan ending in 2018 if a consolidation process was underway and if he was asked to do so.
The Fiat chief has made repeated calls for shrinking the number of players in the global auto industry to help sustain the heavy investments needed to meet demands for cleaner, safer vehicles.
He has not denied a New York Times report last month that said he had emailed GM Chief Executive Mary Barra in March suggesting the two companies combine, but was rebuffed.
On Friday, Marchionne repeated that he writes "lots of e-mails" and speaks to "everyone" in the industry. But he added that the email to GM was not "the same as the others".
"This is a difficult business. I am the only guy who has the intellectual honesty to say this."
He also confirmed the group's 2015 targets of 100 billion euros (73 billion pounds) in revenues and profit of 4.2-4.5 billion euros.