35,000 now to be without jobs plus numerous plants to close.
Scenario One: All the consultants and business analyst talking heads and other purveyors of the 20-20 Hindsight Told You So wisdom are now preaching the obvious: Ford got indigestion, choked on all those other brands, lost its way -- who was it trying to appeal to, etc etc. It'll be another $10 share. Don't touch it for a while till the bleeding stops and so on and so forth.
Scenario Two: Ford say this is a reflection of hard times in the market, the new brands will pull us out, just as the Model A did in the thirties, the '49 Sedan did after the War, the Taurus did in the eighties after the oil crunch etc etc
Scenario Three (less talked about, seems to me) from the Little Bird brigade says, well, er, ahem, er, excuse me, can we talk for a minute about the $3 billion, yes, billion with a "b", the Ford family pulled out of the business last year.........don't suppose that has anything to do with it....
Over to the scions, the pundits and the prophets.....
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Thanks, Growler. I didn't know that. I've patched it to Andy English at the paper just in case he didn't know it.
HJ
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HJ:
I got this from the business commentary on the Fox TV News Channel after the Bill Ford speech today (somehow his statement he wasn't going to take any salary didn't do much for the reception he got!). It intrigued me and I've been trying to substantiate it via the net pages of the FT and WSJ, no mention so far.
Will keep trying with Fortune and Bus. Week and the rest just for my own interest.
The more you get into its scope and nature the more horrendous the restructure, some of which will take years to achieve because of agreements with the UAW etc, not to mention the costs. And what about all those cars sold on zero financing, they're going to clutter up the liabilities column for at least a couple of years.
It also looks like Mr Nasser's got a lot to answer for, for muddying the company's mission. Doubtless he's still counting his parachute so no worries for him.
Must be a few gleeful hands being rubbed in GM"s boardrooms.
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HJ:
I got this from the business commentary on the Fox TV News Channel after the Bill Ford speech today (somehow his statement he wasn't going to take any salary didn't do much for the reception he got!). It intrigued me and I've been trying to substantiate it via the net pages of the FT and WSJ, no mention so far.
Will keep trying with Fortune and Bus. Week and the rest just for my own interest.
The more you get into its scope and nature the more horrendous the restructure, some of which will take years to achieve because of agreements with the UAW etc, not to mention the costs. And what about all those cars sold on zero financing, they're going to clutter up the liabilities column for at least a couple of years.
It also looks like Mr Nasser's got a lot to answer for, for muddying the company's mission. Doubtless he's still counting his parachute so no worries for him.
Must be a few gleeful hands being rubbed in GM"s boardrooms.
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When I were a lad, or at least when I first became interested in cars, Fords made models for the national markets (I used to live fairly near to Dagenham, a lot of the locals worked there and public tours round the factory were popular). We bought Ford UK because they were locally made and designed for the UK.
Ford UK cars were cheap and unsophisticated. You knew they had a finite life, but also that the spares were plentiful, reasonably priced and easy to fit.
Fords are no longer market-specific, are as complex as every other make, no longer cheap and may have been made anywhere in the World (or certainly in the EU).
I actually felt bad when I first bought a non-Ford vehicle, letting the side down and all that, and again when I bought an obviously foreign make. But there is no longer any reason for brand loyalty, to Ford or any other make, e.g. a Ford may be British, German, Spanish or Chinese for all I know, or a mixture of all four, or six, or twenty. Nowdays the mass market is homogenous and unless you are in the luxury car field, Joe Public goes for what gives the required performance within their budget.
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This explains why Ford brass got so paraniod about Mike Rutherford's reaction to the new Fiesta.
HJ
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A large part of that 3 billion is from the shares owned by the trust funds that provide of the ford foundation I understand... the family retains some voteing control from the shares but it is not entiely so as the foundation board is quite liberal ... this is ffrom varion sources including the anual report from the ford.com pages and teh fordfoudation.org pages
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35,000 and several plants, most of it in the US.
Ford has a little bit of an embarassing situationon its hands.
The US Company is in trouble and is totally outperforming the European arm. There are a number of differences in their approaches to the two regions - at least there have been over the last 7 years until now.
Europe
Staff economies
Investment in Production Line and Development technlogy
Large investment in new models
Large investment in new brands/approaches
US
Excessive staff levels and union controla la UK 1970s
Unions restrict adoption of new technology
Model investment is largely in the improvement of existing models
Little investment in acquisition, little interest, or at least action, in new market segments.
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a typo - the US is UNDERperforming compared to Europe.
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Todays papers say that Ford is raising $3,000,000,000 by selling stocks.
HJ
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Growler
The Model A didn't pull Ford out of trouble in the 1930s. It was market leader in 1928, but by 1935 Ford was in third place behind GM and Chrysler. Model A was a crude old heap compared with the streamlined GM offerings at the time.
All three swallowed up a lot of luxury marques at a time when prices were falling, debt levels were high, energy companies were going bust, and there were murmurings about US politicians being involved in business fraud. Sound familiar?
Chris
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I quoted from Bill Ford's speech on the Fox News Channel and he clearly stated that the Model A turned the company round after the Model T got tired.
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Growler
When you think about it, Bill Ford would say that. Sure the Model A helped when it came in in 1927, but it only lifted sales for a year or so. After the Depression hit, Uncle Henry refused to move with the times. GM overtook them in terms of sales in, I think, 1931, under CEO Alfred P. Sloan. In that year GM sold 43 percent of American cars, and Ford 28 percent. Chrysler overtook Ford a couple of years later. As far as I remember, Ford didn't take the lead again until the 1950s. Incidentally, Sloan invented the system we have today of mass-produced models aimed at different markets, depending on income/status, and revised within the lifetime of the average finance deal to tie consumers in.
Cheers
Chris
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Seems that profits from Dr Ing Reitzler's Volvo pulled up European Forf profits.
HJ
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