FORD has confirmed the departure of chief executive Mark Fields as part of a boardroom shake-up following questions over the car giant's performance and future strategy.
The company said on Monday that the 56-year-old has "elected to retire" after 28 years at Ford and will be replaced by Jim Hackett, who joined the car maker's board in 2013 and has led the mobility unit since last year.
The appointment is effective immediately and comes amid concerns about the company's trajectory after a bout of weak sales.
Under Mr Fields' three-year tenure at the helm, Ford's shares have tumbled almost 40 per cent and he has come under fire for not focusing enough on the core business.
Executive chairman Bill Ford said: "We're moving from a position of strength to transform Ford for the future."
He added: "Mark Fields has been an outstanding leader and deserves a lot of credit for all he has accomplished in his many roles around the globe at Ford.
"His strong leadership was critical to our North American restructuring, our turnaround at the end of the last decade, and our record profits in the past two years."
Turning his eye to the new chief executive, Mr Ford said: "Jim Hackett is the right CEO to lead Ford during this transformative period for the auto industry and the broader mobility space."
Mr Hackett is the former boss of office furniture maker Steelcase, one of the world's largest office furniture companies and is credited with transforming that company, in part by predicting the shift away from cubicles to open office plans.
The 62-year-old also cut thousands of jobs and moved furniture production from the US to Mexico to stem massive losses at the company.
As part of the shake-up, several Ford executives are taking on new roles.
Jim Farley, who led the company's European division back to profitability in recent years, will become vice president of global markets and will oversee Lincoln, sales and marketing.
Joe Hinrichs, president of Ford's Americas division, will oversee global product development, manufacturing and quality.
Marcy Klevorn, Ford's chief technical officer, will replace Hackett as the head of Ford Smart Mobility LLC, Ford's future mobility unit.
All three will take up their roles June 1, with their replacements set to be announced at a later date.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here