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 汽车行业：Ford Selects Volvo CEO; Says Unit Isn't For Sale（转帖） |
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安普若
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作者：安普若 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
Ford Selects Volvo CEO; Says Unit Isn't For Sale
By MATTHEW DOLAN
September 3, 2008; Page B1 Wall Street Journal
Ford Motor Co. tapped a new head for its Volvo unit, while again denying speculation the upscale Swedish car maker is being primed for sale.
London-native Stephen Odell, chief operating officer of Ford of Europe, was named president and chief executive of Volvo Car Corp. as of Oct. 1, becoming the first non-Swede to run the unit. Mr. Odell, 53 years old, succeeds Frederik Arp, who decided to leave the company, Ford said.
The move comes as Ford attempts to turn Volvo into a more independently run unit. In the past Ford had tried to integrate Volvo more closely with its Ford brand, sharing parts and some back-office operations.
Volvo's future has been in question since Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally took the company's helm in 2006 and focused the company's resources on reviving its main Ford brand. The company has since sold niche nameplates such as Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin. A comment by Mr. Mulally last month that Volvo would be a more standalone operation renewed speculation that Volvo might be sold. In an interview Tuesday, Lewis Booth, Ford's European chief, reiterated Ford statements that Volvo isn't for sale. He declined to say whether Ford or its representatives had shopped around the brand in recent months as some reports have indicated.
"We have asked Volvo to equip themselves to do more things on their own," said Mr. Booth, who is also executive vice president of Ford. He added that the two companies would continue to share some product-development and purchasing operations. In recent months, Ford has dialed back an effort to integrate Volvo dealers into its spare-parts distribution network in the U.S., leaving Volvo largely to manage shipments on its own.
Volvo also is moving its North American headquarters to New Jersey from Southern California, not to Dearborn, Mich., which Ford calls home. Mr. Booth said other changes will follow, including separating work on interior vehicle design and unraveling the companies' joint back-office and sales operations.
Such steps "don't make sense for an efficient operation. You don't get the benefits of scale," said Rich Mathews, president of Red Bank Volvo, a New Jersey dealership that his family has owned for 52 years. "The only thing that seems to make sense to me is that they're getting ready to sell," he added.
Speculation about a sale has intensified this summer as Ford's troubles in the U.S. market have worsened. The company posted a record second-quarter loss of $8.7 billion. Although Ford had cash and equivalent assets of $26.6 billion on hand as of June 30, it may still need to raise more money to keep the company going and fund Mr. Mulally's plan to retool several U.S. Ford plants to make cars instead of trucks.
It isn't clear how much Ford could get for Volvo in a sale, but any price would likely be far less than the $6.5 billion Ford paid for it in 1999. Charles Moore, senior managing director at Conway, MacKenzie & Dunleavy, a Birmingham, Mich., consulting firm, believes Volvo is an asset that Ford could sell. "The auto makers are leaving nothing off the table and Volvo is clearly an option available to Ford that it can't ignore," he said.
Mr. Booth said Ford is committed to improving Volvo's bottom line, saying that the selection of one of the European unit's top executives as Volvo's new CEO showed the importance of the Volvo brand. Before becoming chief operating officer of Ford of Europe in April, Mr. Odell headed Ford's marketing and sales in Europe and held several senior positions at Mazda Motor Corp., Ford's Japanese affiliate.
Ford said neither Mr. Odell nor Mr. Arp was available to comment. Still, Volvo is now left increasingly on its own. Doug Speck, who was named president and chief executive of Volvo Cars of North America earlier this year, said that consolidating Volvo's headquarters in New Jersey moves the brand closer to Sweden and its strongest market along the U.S. East Coast.
Some dealers say they just want Ford to resolve the issue. "Make a decision," said David Stein, a Volvo dealer in Austin, Texas, who is also the president of the brand's retail advisory council in the U.S. If Volvo needs to be sold, he said, "get rid of it and do it quickly. Or stick with us and improve the brand. "
For years, the upscale brand attracted customers based on its safety record, becoming a favorite of status-seeking baby boomers and their young families. Earlier in the decade, Volvo had a big hit with the XC90 sport-utility vehicle.
But more recently Volvo has been buffeted by dropping sales, disappearing profits and dwindling customer loyalty. Last month, Volvo's U.S. sales declined more than 46% compared with July 2007. The brand incurred a loss of $270 million in the first half of this year, compared with a $3 million profit for the same period in 2007.
Mr. Speck attributed Volvo's recent slide in U.S. sales to an adverse currency exchange between the U.S. dollar and Swedish krona.
One problem for Volvo is that other auto makers have focused on safety, eroding Volvo's main selling point. Tim Geiger, a married 50-year-old computer software salesman and father of two from Duxbury, Mass., said he considered, then rejected, buying a Volvo recently, largely based on price and poor reports from friends regarding reliability.
"For a long time, people wanted to pay the safety premium. I think that the safety gap has closed," said Mr. Geiger, who instead chose to buy a used Mercedes C260 sedan.
作者：安普若 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 汽车行业：Ford Selects Volvo CEO; Says Unit Isn't For Sale（转帖） -- 安普若 - (5771 Byte) 2008-9-05 周五, 22:49 (1608 reads)
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