Keith Naughton and Jeff Green Detroit
FORD hired veteran automotive analyst and investment banker John Casesa to lead its global strategy, creating a senior adviser position to chief executive Mark Fields.
Casesa, 52, would join the company from March 1 as group vice-president of global strategy and report to Fields, 54, Ford said on Tuesday.
Casesa “will be the most senior leader and corporate officer overseeing global strategy and business development”, Ford said.
The second largest US vehicle maker did not fill the chief operating officer role after Fields left that position last July to become the chief executive, succeeding the retiring Alan Mulally. Ford’s overseas operations are vast and complex. The vehicle maker is on a factory building binge in China, while it struggles to reverse losses in Europe and South America. In North America, Ford is introducing an aluminium-bodied F-150 pickup, its top seller.
“John knows business inside and out,” Fields said. “His deep experience and relationships will help guide and shape our global strategies – particularly as we challenge today’s business model and push to innovate to make us even stronger tomorrow.”
Casesa would help “steer the company’s investments in new products, technologies and business models”, the company said. He would focus on developing Ford’s strategy in self-driving cars and expanding into other areas of mobility, such as car sharing, while also helping the vehicle maker analyse big data to spot trends.
“His role is a strategic role and he would represent an independent, outside voice,” Maryann Keller, an independent consultant, said. “This is in a company, that despite the enormous changes that it has made in the last seven, eight, nine years, has a tendency… to sort of look inward.”
Previously, Casesa was the senior managing director at Guggenheim Partners, a New York investment banking firm, where he lead the automotive practice. Before that, he was an automotive analyst at Merrill Lynch and Schroders for almost 20 years. Earlier in his career, he worked as a product planner for General Motors. – Bloomberg