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BREAKING: Ford CEO Hacket To Retire; Farley Is Appointed New CEO

6K views 42 replies 24 participants last post by  jpd80 
#1 ·
The Wall Street Journal
August 4, 2020

Ford Motor Company Chief Operating Officer Jim Farley will take over as chief executive, replacing the retiring Jim Hackett, who is more than three years into a turnaround effort that has yet to lift profits and the auto maker’s depressed share price.

The company said Tuesday Mr. Farley, 58 years old, will succeed Mr. Hackett, 65, on Oct. 1. Mr. Hackett will remain in an advisory role through next spring, the company said.
Ford Motor Company press release:

DEARBORN, Mich., Aug. 4, 2020 – Ford Motor Company today announced that Jim Hackett, who has led the company’s transformation since 2017, plans to retire from the company. Jim Farley has been named the company’s new president and CEO and will join the board of directors, effective Oct. 1.

Hackett, 65, and Farley, 58, will work together on a smooth leadership transition over the next two months.

Under Hackett, Ford moved aggressively into the new era of smart vehicles and drove a deeper focus on customers’ wants and needs. At the same time, Ford improved the fitness of the base business – restructuring operations, invigorating the product portfolio and reducing bureaucracy.

“I am very grateful to Jim Hackett for all he has done to modernize Ford and prepare us to compete and win in the future,” said Bill Ford, Ford’s executive chairman. “Our new product vision – led by the Mustang Mach-E, new F-150 and Bronco family – is taking shape. We now have compelling plans for electric and autonomous vehicles, as well as full vehicle connectivity. And we are becoming much more nimble, which was apparent when we quickly mobilized to make life-saving equipment at the outset of the pandemic.”

Farley, an automotive leader with deep global experience and a successful track record, collaborated with Hackett over the past three years to develop and execute Ford’s Creating Tomorrow Together plan to transform Ford into a higher-growth, higher-margin business.

“Jim Farley matches an innate feel for cars and customers with great instincts for the future and the new technologies that are changing our industry,” Bill Ford said. “Jim’s passion for great vehicles and his intense drive for results are well known, and I have also seen him develop into a transformational leader with the determination and foresight to help Ford thrive into the future.”

Farley joined Ford in 2007 as global head of Marketing and Sales and went on to lead Lincoln, Ford South America, Ford of Europe and all Ford global markets in successive roles. In April 2019, Farley was chosen to lead Ford’s New Businesses, Technology & Strategy team, helping the company determine how to capitalize on powerful forces reshaping the industry – such as software platforms, connectivity, AI, automation and new forms of propulsion. He was named chief operating officer in February of this year.

Hackett, who will continue as a special advisor to Ford through March of 2021, said the time is right to pass the mantle of leadership to Jim Farley.

“My goal when I took on the CEO role was to prepare Ford to win in the future,” Hackett said. “The hardest thing for a proud, long-lived company to do is change to meet the challenges of the world it’s entering rather than the world it has known. I’m very proud of how far we have come in creating a modern Ford and I am very optimistic about the future.

“I have worked side-by-side with Jim Farley for the past three years and have the greatest confidence in him as a person and a leader,” Hackett said. “He has been instrumental in crafting our new product portfolio and redesigning our businesses around the world. He is also a change agent with a deep understanding of how to lead Ford in this new era defined by smart vehicles in a smart world.”

Said Farley: “I love Ford and I am honored by the opportunity to serve and create value for Ford’s employees, customers, dealers, communities and all of our stakeholders. Jim Hackett has laid the foundation for a really vibrant future and we have made tremendous progress in the past three years. I am so excited to work together with the whole Ford team to realize the full potential of this great company in a new era.”








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#5 ·
Seems like a good call to me. At least Farley is a life long automotive guy with adequate years at Ford. I like this decision because I was never impressed with a man who knows **** about the automotive business. That includes Mulally, who was just the right man at the right time. Correct me if I am wrong, but he killed Merc and wanted to do same to Lincoln. I do like where Ford is right now with future product directions. How much of that was Hackett, I don't know.
 
#7 ·
I was not impressed with Hackett so I am not upset with this news
 
#19 ·
Beat me to it. Plus Buddy Hackett was almost always drunk.

And it's going to be awesome!


Holy crap...Chris Farley is his cousin, according to Wikipedia!
Yes he can. Be.

You mean to tell me Jim Farley lives in a van down by the river? :):):)
It's a FORD van. Yes we can.
 
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#10 · (Edited)
Fun fact, Ford requires their CEOs to retire by the age of 65. Guess who turned 65 in April?

Hackett was liked in the company, people found him Gregarious and a good delegator. Farley is more tempermental, but he's also a visionary and passionate about the company. I've always been impressed by Farley as a communicator, which is Hackett's biggest weakness. We'll see how he is as a manager, he should be tougher than Hackett but I can imagine him clashing more with his teams.
 
#17 ·
THE AUTOEXTREMIST - RANTS
FORD GOES LONG. AND WRONG.
DateTUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2020 AT 02:16PM
By Peter M. DeLorenzo

Detroit. As I predicted a long time ago, Jim Farley will replace Jim Hackett as Ford’s CEO, effective October 1. This move was a fait accompli the moment Joe Hinrichs left the company in February. Thus, another transition begins for Ford, a company that has been on a roller-coaster ride since the day Alan Mulally left.

Hackett was the little-known furniture company executive and FoB (Friend of Bill Ford) who was handed the reins of the company in the wake of Mark Fields’ departure. Fields had succeeded Mulally, but it all went wrong for him in due time, so Bill tapped Hackett to run his family’s company. Now, if Bill had his druthers, Mulally would be just now getting ready to retire; he wanted the ex-Boeing executive to remain CEO basically for life. And although this was a view that was shared by many, alas it wasn’t to be. So, Bill alighted on the notion that Hackett could be "The Guy." And for some fleeting moments, Jim showed flashes that he could be "The Guy" but only intermittently. Hackett’s esoteric pronouncements (I dubbed him “Professor Moon Beam”) and his vision of the future – defined by connected cities et al. – and Ford’s role in it were all deemed well and good, but meanwhile the machine that defines Ford wasn’t being served. Hackett, by all accounts a decent, smart and well-meaning guy, just didn’t have the depth and breadth of experience to make a real difference at Ford. And his role at Ford predictably amounted to yet another transition, one that lasted three years.

So, now what? The one thing Ford desperately needs more than anything else right now is a chief executive who understands this business inside and out and can guide Ford through perilous waters. And Bill Ford has decided that Jim Farley is "The Guy." Needless to say, longtime readers of this website know that I vehemently disagree with Ford’s decision.

Farley, the former Toyota wunderkind who was responsible for the launch of the Scion brand, has developed quite the notorious reputation at Ford as one who is unfettered by rational thought and unburdened by accountability, and who has a penchant for going completely off the rails. Known for his prodigiously short attention span and burdened by an excruciatingly painful interpersonal awkwardness, Farley’s belligerent, condescending style of dealing with underlings, along with his classic “parachute in, helicopter out” M.O. that has defined bad actor executives for decades in this business became his calling card.

It gets worse. Farley has long considered himself to be “the smartest guy in the room” at Ford, much to everyone’s endless chagrin, because the reality is that he isn’t. It’s a carefully crafted facade that is hollow to its core. This was confirmed by the fact that Farley became known as "The Two Jims" because interactions with him became a meandering crapshoot, hinging upon whether people encountered the "good" Jim or the "bad" Jim on that particular day. Needless to say, when the "bad" Jim was unleashed, Farley left a trail of bad feelings and highly questionable decisions in his wake.

Now that Bill Ford has decided that Jim Farley is “The Guy,” it’s no secret that seasoned executives are cowering under their desks because an emboldened Farley, unfettered and untethered, has all the makings of an unmitigated disaster. Am I picking on Farley? Hardly. I have only scratched the surface in describing this ego maniacal character, and now that he has been given the CEO reins, he could wreak havoc on the company’s future for years.

Ford’s PR Chief – Mark Truby – who worked closely with Farley during his European stint, told me three years ago that he believed Farley would eventually be CEO. True to his word, Truby and his eager PR minions have been preparing for this day for going on eighteen months now, leaving no stone unturned in a scorched earth offensive to bury Farley’s “Two Jims” persona once and for all. This charm offensive – or should I say smarm offensive – has disgusted Ford insiders and left them in head-shaking disbelief.

In fact, reading some of these PR-abetted stories that have showed up in the media, the uninformed might think that Farley walks on water, possesses the riveting intellect that occupies a space in the stratosphere beyond mere mortals, has never put a wheel wrong in his entire career, and is now logically anointed “The Guy” as Hackett prepares to wander off into the sunset. These pieces were designed to portray a wonderfully benign Farley, an executive whose rise has no perceptible limit, and whose enduring warmth is something that people crave to bask in. This "humanization" campaign of Farley is unmitigated bull****, of course – and it has nothing to do with the "real" Jim Farley – the one hordes of people at Ford have grown to loathe with a level of disgust that is palpable.

This announcement from Ford makes me fear for the very future of the company. In fact, as I’ve said previously, the company has embarked on a Highway to Hell. I think Ford has five years – tops – to make it. And I am not optimistic. At that juncture the family could very well be forced to make a deal to sell the company, or have their share significantly reduced in some sort of orchestrated takeover. That’s how dire I view this situation to be.

Yes, it’s about The Product in this business; it always has been and it always will be. And Ford definitely has some new products to talk about. “The Franchise” – the new F-150 truck – is an incredible cash machine second to none in this business and it should continue as such. And the upcoming Bronco due next spring should be – if Ford doesn’t screw up the launch – a slam dunk, grand slam, home run. (I don’t rate the all-electric Mustang Mach-E crossover nearly as highly because at this point it can only be described as a giant “We’ll See.”)

But then again as successful as the new F-150 and Bronco should be, the cash burn going on in Dearborn is unfolding at a devastating cadence. How bad is it? At one point it was estimated that Ford was losing upwards of $161 million per day. And there is no amount of “fireside chats” with analysts – something that top Ford execs have tried of late in order to persuade them that the Dearborn automaker will be okay – that can mask that fact. No matter how many cool products the company has coming, when you’re burning through that kind of cash, time is the enemy, and Ford's third quarter performance should be telling. Right now, the sands of time are whistling through the hourglass at a furious rate for Ford.

Three years ago, I had this to say about the future of Ford – projecting to the year 2030 – in a column entitled Runnin’ Down A Dream: “The VW Group long ago established itself as the largest automotive conglomerate in the world. The news? Its working agreement with the Ford Motor Company had evolved into a full takeover, as Ford’s restructuring was stalled by its perpetually late product cadence, ineffectual leadership and having pissed away billions trying to become a mobility company. And for the first time in its history Ford was no longer controlled by the Ford family, although the family still maintained a significant - but notably reduced - presence in terms of stock and influence.”

Today, I wouldn’t change anything about my prediction. Well, maybe one thing: I don’t think we’ll have to wait until 2030 to see the Ford Motor Company inexorably changed for good. The denouement will come – one way or the other – by 2025.

In The Last Worthless Evening, Don Henley sings about “Time, time, ticking… ticking away” in a wistful lament, and his melancholy refrain somehow seems sadly appropriate right about now with everything that’s going on in the world. Time is still ticking away for the Ford Motor Company, whether anyone over in Dearborn wants to admit it, or not.

As for Jim Farley being CEO? When everything is factored in, he is simply the wrong person, at the wrong time, at the wrong car company.

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.
 
#20 ·
It's a little more tame than I expected, but I'm sure the vitriol will increase as Farley's decisions become public.

I've never been a Farley fan myself, going back to his Toyota days. I always thought he came across in interviews as a smug prick. And that was before I ever knew what Petey D thought of him.

Definitely time for popcorn at the Ford Theater...
 
#41 ·
Farley is driven and talented, but he's kind of an jacka** in more ways than one.

Every time I think of him, I think about his ridiculous "Fu*k GM" rant from a few years back ( “I'm going to beat Chevrolet on the head with bat”, etc).
 
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