Boeing's Mulally named new CEO of Ford

DETROIT – Bill Ford, who struggled for five years to steer Ford Motor Co. toward financial stability, is stepping down as chief executive and is being replaced by Alan Mulally, a top executive from the airplane maker Boeing Co.

Ford, part of the founding family at the auto company, will remain as chairman, however, according to today's surprise announcement.

Mulally, previously executive vice president of Boeing and president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, has also been named president at Ford.

Mulally, 61, was widely praised for being a key architect of the resurgence of Boeing's commercial airplanes unit over the past couple of years. He was a top candidate for the Boeing CEO job last year but the company went outside instead to select aerospace veteran Jim McNerney, then the 3M Co. chief executive.

Boeing Co. today named Scott Carson as head of its commercial airplanes unit.

Carson, 60, had been vice president of sales for the Seattle-based division and is a 34-year veteran of the company.

In announcing Mulally's appointment to Ford employees, Bill Ford said in an e-mail that Ford's turnaround effort "required the additional skills of an executive who has led a major manufacturing enterprise through such challenges before."

Mulally, who has spent 37 years at Boeing, said he looked forward to applying lessons learned at Boeing to Ford.

"I also recognize that Ford has a strong foundation upon which we can build. The company's long tradition of innovation, developing new markets, and creating iconic vehicles that represent customer values is a great advantage that we can leverage for our future," he said in a statement.

Dearborn-based Ford, which lost $254 million in the second quarter, pledged in July to speed up a restructuring it announced in January. Ford has been hurt by competition from fuel-efficient cars mainly from Asian automakers.

Boeing said Carson "is a seasoned and well-respected leader who knows our customers, our business strategies, and our products and services inside and out," CEO Jim McNerney said. "He is uniquely qualified to step in and lead our commercial airplanes team and continue to advance our performance and growth plans."

Boeing also named James Jamieson, 58, to the new position of chief operating officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Jamieson currently is senior vice president for engineering, operations and technology, at Boeing's corporate offices in Chicago.

The 61-year-old Mulally had been with Boeing since joining the company in 1969 as an engineer. He managed programs for various Boeing models and was general manager of the program that developed the 777. He was named president of the commercial airplanes division in 1998.

Mulally was in charge of the company's airplane production at a time when it was overtaken by European rival Airbus. But he was credited with helping to steer the unit to a resurgence in the last couple of years, aided by a flood of orders for the new 787 jet. In 2005, the business generated orders and sales of nearly $23 billion.

Boeing shares fell 56 cents to $74.80 in after-hours trading.