Hey, I don't know we could quote ourselves in Third person.
Raoul is outraged.

 

Don't know if the British ever had a auto manufacture as strong as Ford is now. They still have Aston Martin, but this is a specific segment manufacture, and will never have annual revenues that match Ford's quarterly results. Even in the best of times Rolls Royce did not do that well ( with the US buying engines for planes ). Britain is not known for being a haven of well run innovative companies. They are trying to draw in high tech companies, but the carrot for this is just sad.

The new guy came into Ford and took it to task to make Ford a strong company.
He got the old bonds off the table as soon as they were callable. He leveraged everything he could back in 2006 and the market thought it was Ford's swan song. Jokes on the market for thinking this. I still recall the comparisons to GM and Ford back in 2006, and now where is that shareholder value of GM and Chrysler stock ?

Bill Ford did start the plan to being profitable, but he looked at it in sections rather than a whole. Trying to spot fix things to get Ford back to being profitable by shuttering plants, and laying off people was not going to do it.

The new guy got the expensive money called back in, to reduce interest payments, sold off the lines that were purchased under Bill Ford's reign and had the guts to listen to ( and act upon ) the opinion to ditch Mercury, as it had lost what ever name it had, and just floated around in no man's land.

Bill Ford can't take credit for the turn around, so he trys to take credit for hiring the guy from Boeing. Bet that was the board's decision, just like the board's decision that Bill had to go.

 

I thought Ford owned Aston Martin, but sold it recently.

 

2007 is when Ford sold it off. At the time they kept 10% ownership.

Keep in mind the I am talking about from the time the new head came over from Boeing ( 2006 if I have that right - I remember this by the MY of my truck ).
In the bigger scope of things, anything he acted on is considered recently when you look at him being there only 5 years.

Probably the only way they could get the company off the books was to hold onto a chunk of it.
Cheapen up the sale by $ 100M so the financing could be had without it being a 100% financed deal ( someone other than an investment house had skin in it ).

 

Aston Martin is barely hanging on - most of their production is now outsourced to Austria.