Ford names new CEO amid management shake-up

DETROIT – Ford confirmed Monday that, in a wide-ranging reshuffling of top management, Jim Hackett will become the automaker’s new CEO. The move brings the three-year tenure of Mark Fields as chief executive to an abrupt end.

Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford praised the tenure and achievements of Fields but said the automaker needs to make decisions faster, break down its hierarchical structures and communicate its strategy more clearly to the public.

“Mark had a tremendous career at Ford and did great things, starting with the Way Forward plan in North America (in 2005). That was a huge building block,” Ford said. “But this is a time of unprecedented change.”

Ford’s decision to change course comes amid pressure from shareholders to improve the company’s stock price, which has declined 40 percent since Fields became CEO even though the company has been extremely profitable.

Hackett, 62, has a long track record of innovation, including his tenure as CEO of furniture company Steelcase and as interim athletic director at the University of Michigan, where he was credited with sealing the deal to hire Jim Harbaugh as head coach of the football team.

Hackett, Ford said, “Will continue to transform the culture of Ford Motor Co.”

Ford’s stock price rose 13 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $11.02 in morning trading.

Hackett, 62, has a long track record of innovation, including his tenure as CEO of furniture company Steelcase and as interim athletic director at the University of Michigan, where he was credited with sealing the deal to hire Jim Harbaugh as head coach of the football team. He also has developed a close relationship with Bill Ford as a member of Ford’s board of directors and as chairman of Ford Smart Mobility.

Hackett, in comments Monday, said he hopes to foster an environment of teamwork at Ford and a structure that is better able to take on challenging issues, such as the coming autonomous vehicle-driven revolution of the auto industry.

“What I want to help impact is where we are going,” Hackett said. “I want to see us differentiate ourselves.”

Ford also made a number of other changes to its management lineup. The changes set up a structure with three top executives with expansive portfolios who will report to Hackett.

Several other executives, including Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks, will also report to Hackett. Hackett said he has asked Bill Ford to lead both government relations and communications.

Fields, 56, proved himself in the early 2000s by engineering the turnaround of Mazda, then a company that was controlled by Ford. Over his 28-year career, Fields held a number of titles with increasing responsibility and emerged as the heir apparent to former CEO Alan Mulally several years before Mulally retired.

Mulally, a former Boeing executive who came to Ford in September 2006 when the automaker was sputtering, led the automaker through the Great Recession without resorting to Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Fields, as president of the Americas in the late 2000s, was the second highest-ranking Ford executive and learned from Mulally.

“Mark Fields was given the nearly impossible task of making the utterly conventional auto manufacturer, Ford Motor Company, into a high-tech information-style company with share values to match,” said Jack R. Nerad, executive editor and market analyst for Kelley Blue Book. “Despite turning in credible profits, Fields was unable to turn Ford into a stock market darling, and that may well prove elusive going forward.”