Ford Motor Restructures Management
Ford Motor announced a top-level restructuring Tuesday aimed at reducing duplication among its global operations and giving its growing financial services empire more clout.
The moves created two new umbrella offices, the Ford Automotive Group and the Ford Financial Services Group, which both now fall under the control of Harold Poling.
Poling, formerly company president, was named vice chairman. He remains chief operating officer. Ford will no longer have a company president.
Under the reorganization, Philip E. Benton Jr. becomes president of the Ford Automotive Group. Benton had been chief of Ford’s International Automotive Operations, which now fall under the automotive group umbrella. Benton remains a company executive vice president.
He was replaced at the top of the international operations by Allan D. Gilmour, previously Ford’s chief financial officer, who remains an executive vice president.
James W. Ford, an executive vice president, was named president of Ford Financial Services Group. Ford was chairman of Ford Credit & Insurance Subsidiaries, which fall under the financial services group. He has been succeeded as head of the subsidiaries by William E. Odom.
The financial services group, which includes First Nationwide Financial Corp., will continue to diversify through acquisition, Ford spokesman Jerry Sloan said.
“This is positioning our automotive group to take advantage of the world market. Closer cooperation and improved coordination will enhance our automotive operations worldwide,” he said.
In the past, Sloan said, Ford has built, assembled and sold similar cars and parts in several countries at the same time--a duplication of effort.
Sloan said Ford will begin to identify which operations best perform specific tasks and increase its ability to interchange parts and designs used by Ford operations in various countries.
Ford always has been the most international of the nation’s Big Three auto makers. Chrysler, which withdrew from the international arena in the late 1970s and early 1980s, only recently has begun to test those waters again.
General Motors, the nation’s largest auto maker, has operations in many countries, but they are only beginning to share information, designs and executives.
Ford has had a long tradition of overseas service for top corporate executives, and many staff members, such as designers, work regularly with counterparts abroad.
The new moves also will help prepare potential successors for Poling, 62, and Ford Chairman Donald E. Petersen, 61, Sloan said.
“These are important steps in meeting the challenges facing the company and assuring that our executives have the diverse training and experience required for successful leadership in the years ahead,” Petersen said.
The most significant move appeared to be that of Gilmour, 53, said Michael Luckey, industry analyst with Shearson Lehman Bros. in New York.
“Now he is going to get operating experience running the international operation. He is young, highly regarded by Wall Street. The last two people who have run the company have had a fair amount of overseas experience. They may be grooming him for the top position some day,” Luckey said.
The changes had nothing to do with the death last month of former Ford Chairman Henry Ford II, Sloan and Luckey said. The changes had been considered for several months, and Ford had approved them before his death, Luckey said.
