The Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) is an American multinational corporation based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury brands, Ford also owns Volvo Cars of Sweden, and a small stake in Mazda of Japan and Aston Martin of England. Ford's former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to Tata Motors of India in March 2008.
Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines. Henry Ford's methods came to be known around the world as Fordism by 1914.
Ford is currently the fourth-largest automaker in the world based on number of vehicles sold annually, directly behind Volkswagen. In 2007, Ford fell from second to third in US annual vehicle sales for the first time in 56 years, behind only General Motors and Toyota. However, Ford occasionally outsells Toyota in shorter periods (most recently, during the summer months of 2009). As of 2008, Ford has become the second largest automaker in Europe (only behind Volkswagen), with sales that occasionally exceed those in the United States and large markets in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Ford is the seventh-ranked overall American-based company in the 2008 Fortune 500 list, based on global revenues in 2008 of $146.3 billion. In 2008, Ford produced 5.532 million automobiles and employed about 213,000 employees at around 90 plants and facilities worldwide. Starting in 2007, Ford received more initial quality survey awards from J. D. Power and Associates than any other automaker. Five of Ford's vehicles ranked at the top of their categories and fourteen vehicles ranked in the top three.
History
Main article: History of Ford Motor CompanyThe Ford Motor Company was launched in a converted factory in 1903 with $28,000 in cash from twelve investors, most notably John and Horace Dodge (who would later found their own car company). Henry's first attempt under his name was the Henry Ford Company on November 3, 1901, which became the Cadillac Motor Company on August 22, 1902. During its early years, the company produced just a few cars a day at its factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Groups of two or three men worked on each car from components made to order by other companies. Henry Ford was 40 years old when he founded the Ford Motor Company, which would go on to become one of the world's largest and most profitable companies, as well as being one to survive the Great Depression. As one of the largest family-controlled companies in the world, the Ford Motor Company has been in continuous family control for over 100 years.
Corporate governance
Members of the board as of early 2007 are: Chief Sir John Bond, Richard Manoogian, Stephen Butler, Ellen Marram, Kimberly Casiano, Alan Mulally (President and CEO), Edsel Ford II, Homer Neal, William Clay Ford Jr., Jorma Ollila, Irvine Hockaday Jr., John L. Thornton and William Clay Ford (Director Emeritus).
The main corporate officers are: Lewis Booth (Executive Vice President, Chairman (PAG) and Ford of Europe), Mark Fields (Executive Vice President, President of The Americas), Donat Leclair (Executive Vice President and CFO), Mark A. Schulz (Executive Vice President, President of International Operations) and Michael E. Bannister (Group Vice President; Chairman & CEO Ford Motor Credit). Paul Mascarenas (Vice President of Engineering, The Americas Product Development)
Recent company developments
During the mid to late 1990s, Ford sold large numbers of vehicles, in a booming American economy with soaring stock market and low fuel prices. With the dawn of the new century, legacy healthcare costs, higher fuel prices, and a faltering economy led to falling market shares, declining sales, and sliding profit margins. Most of the corporate profits came from financing consumer automobile loans through Ford Motor Credit Company.
By 2005, corporate bond rating agencies had downgraded the bonds of both Ford and GM to junk status, citing high U.S. health care costs for an aging workforce, soaring gasoline prices, eroding market share, and dependence on declining SUV sales for revenues. Profit margins decreased on large vehicles due to increased "incentives" (in the form of rebates or low interest financing) to offset declining demand.
In the face of demand for higher fuel efficiency and falling sales of minivans, Ford moved to introduce a range of new vehicles, including "Crossover SUVs" built on unibody car platforms, rather than more body-on-frame chassis. In developing the hybrid electric powertrain technologies for the Ford Escape Hybrid SUV, Ford licensed similar Toyota hybrid technologies to avoid patent infringements. Ford announced that it will team up with electricity supply company Southern California Edison (SCE) to examine the future of plug-in hybrids in terms of how home and vehicle energy systems will work with the electrical grid. Under the multi-million-dollar, multi-year project, Ford will convert a demonstration fleet of Ford Escape Hybrids into plug-in hybrids, and SCE will evaluate how the vehicles might interact with the home and the utility's electrical grid. Some of the vehicles will be evaluated "in typical customer settings," according to Ford.
In December 2006, the company raised its borrowing capacity to about $25 billion, placing substantially all corporate assets as collateral to secure the line of credit. Chairman Bill Ford has stated that "bankruptcy is not an option". In order to control its skyrocketing labor costs (the most expensive in the world), the company and the United Auto Workers, representing approximately 46,000 hourly workers in North America, agreed to a historic contract settlement in November 2007 giving the company a substantial break in terms of its ongoing retiree health care costs and other economic issues. The agreement includes the establishment of a company-funded, independently-run Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (more commonly known as a VEBA) trust to shift the burden of retiree health care from the company's books, thereby improving its balance sheet. However, this arrangement will not begin to take effect until January 1, 2010. The agreement also gives hourly workers the job security they were seeking by having the company commit to substantial investments in most of its factories.
The automaker reported the largest annual loss in company history in 2006 of $12.7 billion, and estimated that it would not return to profitability until 2009. However, Ford surprised Wall Street in the second quarter of 2007 by posting a $750 million profit. Despite the gains, the company finished the year with a $2.7 billion loss, largely attributed to finance restructuring at Volvo.
In June 2, 2008, Ford sold its Jaguar and Land Rover operations to Tata Motors for $2.3 billion.
In January 2008, Ford launched a website listing the ten Built Ford Tough rules as well as a series of webisodes that parodied the show COPS (TV Series) .
During November 2008, Ford, together with Chrysler and General Motors, sought financial aid at Congressional hearings in Washington D.C. in the face of worsening conditions caused by the automotive industry crisis. The three companies presented action plans for the sustainability of the industry. The Detroit based automakers were unsuccessful at obtaining assistance through Congressional legislation. GM and Chrysler later received assistance through the Executive Branch from the T.A.R.P. funding provisions. On December 19, the cost of credit default swaps to insure the debt of Ford was 68 percent the sum insured for five years in addition to annual payments of 5 percent. That means it costs $6.8 million paid upfront to insure $10 million in debt, in addition to payments of $500,000 per year. In January 2009, Ford announced a $14.6 billion loss in the preceding year, making 2008 its worst year in history. Still, the company claimed to have sufficient liquidity to fund its business plans and thus, did not ask for government aid. Through April 2009, Ford's strategy of debt for equity exchanges, erased $9.9 B in liabilities (28% of its total), in order to leverage its cash position. This resulted in a $2.3 B 2nd Quarterly profit for 2009.
"The Way Forward"
Main article: The Way ForwardIn the latter half of 2005, Chairman Bill Ford asked newly-appointed Ford Americas Division President Mark Fields to develop a plan to return the company to profitability. Fields previewed the Plan, dubbed The Way Forward , at the December 7, 2005 board meeting of the company; and it was unveiled to the public on January 23, 2006. "The Way Forward" includes resizing the company to match current market realities, dropping some unprofitable and inefficient models, consolidating production lines, and shutting fourteen factories and cutting 30,000 jobs.
These cutbacks are consistent with Ford's roughly 25% decline in U.S. automotive market share since the mid-late 1990s. Ford's target is to become profitable again in 2009, a year later than projected. Ford's realignment also includes the sale of its wholl
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