Ford EMEA chief and global marketing head to switch jobs: company source

[November 07, 2014]  By Paul Ingrassia

LONDON (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co’s regional chief for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will switch roles with the carmaker’s global head of sales and marketing on Jan. 1, a senior company source said on Friday.

The source confirmed an earlier report by trade publication Automotive News that Stephen Odell, 59, will move from his EMEA position to company headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, switching jobs with global marketing chief Jim Farley, 52.

The changes, which will be announced officially at 1400 GMT (9 a.m. EST), give Farley his first senior operating role in the company and put a seasoned operating executive, Odell, in charge of marketing, sales and service worldwide.

“The idea here is to give a ‘fresh eyes’ approach both to EMEA and global marketing, without tearing up everything,” a senior Ford official told Reuters.

The move comes at the behest of Mark Fields, who took over from Alan Mulally as Ford's president and chief executive last year.

Farley and Odell have headed up two businesses where Ford has struggled to turn things around: the Lincoln luxury brand and its operations in Europe.

Lincoln at one time along with General Motors Co’s <GM.N> Cadillac brand, dominated luxury auto sales in the United States, which at the time was the world’s biggest market.

In the past two decades, German luxury brands BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi have taken the lead in American sales, along with Lexus.

Ford now links Lincoln’s success to China, where the company opened its first dealerships this week and plans to have 60 stores in 50 Chinese cities by 2016. Ford plans to overhaul Lincoln with an investment of $5 billion over the next five years, sources told Reuters last month.

Ford has said it wants to triple Lincoln’s worldwide sales to 300,000 vehicles by 2020.

Last month's results showed that Ford continued to lose money in Europe and in South America, while being profitable in Asia as well as North America.

The loss in Europe widened to $439 million from $182 million a year earlier, mainly due to weakness in Russia.

In a bid to regain traction in a sluggish European market, Ford is introducing 25 new models over the next five years, launching higher-end versions of its mass-market models, striving to end years of losses in the region.

(Additional reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by David Goodman and Mark Potter)

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