Ford Announces New Chief Financial Officer On Jim Farley’s First Day As CEO

Ford has announced some major structural and management changes on Jim Farley’s first day as the chief executive officer. The company has announced that its chief financial officer (CFO) is leaving the company on October 15. Tim Stone will join as CFO at a small intelligence company, the company said in a statement. Stone had a very short stint at Ford as he joined the company on June 1, 2019. He had left Amazon to start his new job at an American multinational automaker. He will be a company veteran who has been looking after the company’s autonomous vehicle operations. The new CFO of Ford will be John Lawler who has been at the company for 30 years. Lawler was named the new CFO by Jim Farley.

During Stone’s tenure, Ford was struggling to implement a USD 11 billion restructuring plan to raise capital for spending and cut expenses. The company had plans to use this capital new technology like electric and autonomous vehicles. Farley said that the company was going through a transformation under the leadership of retiring CEO Jim Hackett. He just wants to give a little push to that transformation process. Ford has plans to increase revenue and attain a sustained 8 per cent pretax profit margin. But the company has not given a fixed time frame for this.

The company said in a statement that it will expand its plans to offer more electric vehicles and add more affordable vehicles to its lineup. Earlier this month, Ford had said that it would offer early retirement incentives under its broader restructuring. Last year, Ford had announced that it would cut 7,000 white-collar positions worldwide and 12,000 jobs in Europe. The cuts were aimed at making faster decisions by reducing bureaucracy. Just like others, the American auto manufacturer too has been struggling in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic forced factory closures. The company is expected to perform better as it posted USD 1.12 billion of net profit.