Ford Sale or Partnership Not Ruled Out
April 17, 2007
Ford Chairman Bill Ford and Ford CEO Mulally do not rule out an eventual sale or partnership for the company, according to interviews in a new magazine.
"We felt the best thing we could do was get our house in order. That doesn't preclude anything down the road. Because even if ultimately a partnership made sense, we'd be a much stronger partner if we were a strong stand-alone company," Bill Ford told Portfolio, a new Conde Nast business magazine released today.
The lengthy article headlined "Driven to the Brink," written by Betsy Morris, appears in the debut issue of Portfolio. The article reveals Ford family members, who own a controlling interest in the auto company, were pressuring Bill Ford to find an outsider to run the company.
Bill Ford confirms he offered the job of chief operating officer to Carlos Ghosn in 2002 when Ghosn was Nissan’s chief executive and to Dieter Zetsche in 2004 when he was Chrysler CEO, according to the Portfolio article.
Before he hired Mulally, Bill Ford confessed to the magazine that he was despondent and on some days "literally didn't want to get out of bed." After Mulally initially turned down the job, Bill Ford recalled slumping in a chair at his Ann Arbor home with a blank scratch pad, "silent and devastated. I had no Plan B."
Bill Ford finally hired the Boeing executive after a long courtship. Mulally has said repeatedly that he initially turned down the job, though he immediately knew he wanted it and later accepted it. Portfolio reports Mulally called the Ford family "American royalty" and asked for autographs at a meeting of family shareholders.
Both Portfolio and Fortune have reported that Ford family members, worried that their stock has lost so much value, have hired financial advisers to guide them, especially now that the company has mortgaged all of its assets to secure reorganization loans.
Posted by Michelle Krebs at 4:55 AM under Ford , News , Personalities | Comments (1) | digg this | Seed Newsvine
The way the Ford family has run this company into the ground is tragic. Family control can be a good thing, enabling a company to take a longer-term perspective than if it were entirely beholden to the stock market. This has been the case with BMW.
But in Ford's case, family control appears to have actually increased the level of politics within the company and thus the frequency of changes in direction. Product has taken a back seat to these politics.
I suppose family control is like having a monarchy. When the king is good, a monarchy is very efficient. But looking at history most kings have not been good, and as a result most kingdoms were constantly ravaged by the by-products of courtiers' political maneuvering.
How many senior executives has Ford run through in the last two decades? How many times has their product strategy, such as it is, changed direction? A ridiculous waste of a good company.
Posted by: Michael Karesh | April 18, 2007 at 6:53 AM