Peugeot (PSA) and Fiat Chrysler (FCA) confirmed their intention to merge on Thursday, in what would be a 50-50 share swap and create the world's fourth-largest carmaker.

The new company's shares will be listed in New York, Paris and Milan with FCA's John Elkann becoming the chairman and Peugeot's Carlos Tavares becoming the CEO. The proposed tie-up would reportedly create an industry behemoth with 8.7 million vehicle sales, $190 billion in turnover and a combined 400,000 employees.

By vehicle sales, Volkswagen Group, Renault-Nissan, and Toyota occupied the top three spots of the world's leading automakers in 2018, according to Statista.

"Discussions have opened a path to the creation of a new group with global scale and resources owned 50% by Groupe PSA shareholders and 50% by FCA shareholders," they said in a joint statement on Thursday morning.

"In a rapidly changing environment, with new challenges in connected, electrified, shared and autonomous mobility, the combined entity would leverage its strong global R&D (research and development) footprint and ecosystem to foster innovation and meet these challenges with speed and capital efficiency."

Early reports of the merger talks — which would create a new group worth roughly $50 billion — have moved share prices for both automakers this week. Italian-American carmaker Fiat Chrysler saw its stock surge as much as 8% on Tuesday and added another 5% on Wednesday. Peugeot shares actually fell 8.8% as markets opened in Europe on Thursday.