Bill Ford: Mulally has carte blanche to stay

[rickaren]

Bill Ford: Mulally has carte blanche to stay

Posted Thursday, Sep 3, 2009, 1:42 pm in Employee News

Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally, credited with steering the automaker’s turnaround, won an endorsement for an indefinite tenure from Ford’s chairman and the founding family’s senior representative at the company, Reuters reported.

“I want Alan to stay as long as he would like to stay and hopefully that is quite a while,” Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. told Reuters on the sidelines of a Detroit Economic Club event on Wednesday. Ford’s comments marked the first time he had addressed Mulally’s stewardship as chief executive since rivals General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC emerged from U.S.-government sponsored bankruptcy protection with new ownership and management, the story said.

Mulally, 64, joined Ford in September 2006 after being recruited by Bill Ford Jr., who stepped aside as CEO to hire him away from Boeing Co. where he was head of its commercial airplanes business, the news service said. The automaker was in a precarious position and widely seen as the weakest of the three Detroit car companies when Ford hired Mulally to revive a turnaround effort that had failed to take hold, the story said.

An auto industry outsider then, Mulally is now the longest-serving CEO among the U.S. automakers, the news service said. GM’s Rick Wagoner, Chrysler’s Bob Nardelli and Mulally all testified to the U.S. Congress for an industry bailout less than a year ago, the story said.

Ford said the automaker has had a succession plan since the day Mulally was hired. He declined to provide details. “Any good corporate governance dictates that you always have succession planning, and that is something we do on a regular basis,” Ford said. “As a chairman that is obviously something that I spend a lot of time on.” (Reuters)