Bloomberg News
promoted Mark Fields to Chief Executive Officer from Chief Operating Officer effective July 1 as CEO Alan Mulally retires from the second-largest U.S. automaker, the company said today in a statement.
'From the first day we discussed Ford's transformation eight years ago, Alan and I agreed that developing the next generation of leaders and ensuring an orderly CEO succession were among our highest priorities,' Executive Chairman Bill Ford said in the statement. 'Mark has transformed several of our operations around the world into much stronger businesses during his 25 years at Ford. Now, Mark is ready to lead our company into the future as CEO.'
Mulally, 68, who had said he would stay at Ford through the end of the year, decided to accelerate his departure because of the 'readiness of Ford's leadership team,' according to the statement. Fields, 53, has been with the company for 25 years.
Mulally has been lining up a substantial corporate position for his next act, probably as a board director or chairman, people with knowledge of his plans have said.
Mulally wants to remain a player in the corporate world, giving voice to the importance of manufacturing and innovation in America, the people said. Over 45 years at Boeing Co. and Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford, he became a specialist on management and doing business in Asia, advising President Barack Obama on international trade.
Profit Turnaround
Ford earned in the last five years after losing $30.1 billion from 2006, the year Mulally arrived, to 2008. Surging sales of Escape sport-utility vehicles, F-Series pickups and Fusion sedans drove Ford's U.S. sales up 11 percent last year. In China, the world's largest car market, Ford now outsells Toyota Motor Corp. Fields' greatest challenge is following Mulally.
After Mulally considered becoming Microsoft Corp.'s CEO last year, investors became eager for Ford to make the transition, Michael Levine, a fund manager at Oppenheimer Funds Inc. in New York, said last month. Mulally pulled out of the Microsoft race in January and said he would stay at Ford through the end of 2014.
Fields, who will be president as well as CEO, has engineered a few turnarounds of his own in his 25 years at Ford. At age 39 in 2000, Fields became CEO of Mazda Motor Corp., in which Ford had a controlling stake at the time. He led a turnaround at Mazda with several Ford executives with whom he later worked closely to revive Ford's North American business, which earned record pretax profit last year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Keith Naughton in Dearborn, Michigan, at knaughton3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jamie Butters at jbutters@bloomberg.net Niamh Ring
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, May 1, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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