Who'd have thought Chrysler could report these kinds of numbers? On Wednesday, the long-troubled U.S. maker plans to report its fourth quarter and full 2011 financial figures which – analysts anticipate – could see as much as $2 billion in full-year operating profits.
That would mark the first time Chrysler will have gone into the black for the full year, on an operating basis, since 1997, just before its ill-fated “merger-of-equals” with German’s Daimler AG. Significantly, the announcement of any full-year profit would come as a stark contrast to the situation the maker found itself in fewer than three years ago, when it was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.