Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. wants Ford Motor Co. to be a more collaborative workplace that can quickly adapt to the rapidly morphing auto-and-mobility sector, so he has made Jim Hackett the new CEO, replacing Mark Fields, according to the Detroit News.
Large Wall Street investors and small shareholders have raised increasing pressure on Ford, whose shares have slipped roughly 40 percent since Fields replaced CEO Alan Mulally in July 2014.
"We need to modernize our business. We have to continue to develop and also invent the new businesses," Bill Ford said at a press conference announcing his management shakeup. "Any one of those is a big task, we have to do all three, and I'm very confident that we can and that we will under Jim's leadership. I've never felt more confident in our future."
The automaker's ousting of Fields and reassignment of three senior executives creates a new structure for the company founded more than a century ago. Hackett, a former CEO of Steelcase Inc. and one-time Ford director who now serves as president of Ford Smart Mobility LLC, will become president and CEO of the Dearborn-based automaker, effective June 1.
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