Alan Mulally’s Legacy at Ford Motor

Global Business

During an earnings conference call, Ford’s Alan Mulally insisted that he hasn’t made any changes to his retirement plan.  He’s expected to stay on board at least through this year, but speculation of an earlier departure continues.

Ford Motor Company’s Alan Mulally

During an earnings conference call, Ford's Alan Mulally insisted that he hasn't made any changes to his retirement plan. He's expected to stay on board at least through this year, but speculation of an earlier departure continues.

Alan Mulally wasn’t born into the Ford family but it would be tough to tell the American car dynasty’s story without including him. Mulally has been the Ford Motor Company’s top executive for less than decade….
but he’s widely credited with saving the automaker when its Detroit rivals, General Motors and Chrysler, were sinking.

An engineer by trade, Mulally spent the bulk of his career soaring through the ranks at Boeing. Then in 2006, he traded in airplanes for cars and became Ford’s CEO.

Using a few moves he perfected at Boeing, Mulally gave his new company a financial and production makeover:
He used all of Ford’s assets including its famous logo as collateral for about 24 billion dollars in cash for a rainy day fund.  Instead of lamenting the loss of sales in Europe, he turned his attention to the Asian market. He also revamped Ford’s product lineup and re-introduced the Taurus, a longtime top seller.

But his real legacy will probably be that he was the one U.S. auto executive who didn’t need a U.S. government bailout.

Mulally may leave Ford behind later this year, but he told CCTV earlier this week that Blue Oval is in good hands.  “The bosses are in place; the strategies are in place; the products are all funded in the next 5 years. So I have all the confidence in the world that Ford is going to keep delivering on Henry Ford’s original promise to the consumers around the world,” Mulally said.

It’s rumored that Mark Fields, Ford’s current chief operating officer, will take the driver’s seat once Mullaly is gone.