Fields seen as 'perfect fit' for Premier post

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<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>By James B. Treece
Automotive News / April 29, 2002


TOKYO - Mark Fields is no Wolfgang Reitzle.

Maybe that's good.

Fields, 41, will become head of Ford Motor Co.'s Premier Automotive Group in June, replacing the 53-year-old Reitzle at the helm of the Volvo, Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston Martin brands.

Fields, who has been president of Mazda Motor Corp. for the past four years, will take over an outfit that will be skeptical of his skills and suitability for the job. Moreover, he will face tough decisions regarding the Premier Automotive Group's mixed results since it was set up three years ago.

But Fields' track record at Mazda implies that he may be well suited for the task, even though - or perhaps because - he is no Reitzle.

"I think it's a perfect fit. I'm positively surprised by what Mark Fields did at Mazda," said Tatsuo Yoshida, an auto analyst for Deutsche Securities Ltd. in Tokyo.

Reitzle, an acclaimed product guru whose silver-spoon tastes were polished by years at BMW AG, was intimately involved in Premier Automotive Group product development.

But the unit's performance under his watch has been mixed: The different brands have benefited from some module and platform synergies, but they increasingly overlapped in the market. In addition, Jaguar has had to use extensive incentives, to the detriment of its luxury image, to reach its sales goals.

Fields, a marketing whiz, cannot expect to mimic Reitzle's engineering-uber-alles approach. Asked what skills he thought Ford CEO Bill Ford sought in tapping him for the Premier Automotive Group job, Fields said: "I spend a lot of time listening, team building, having a very laserlike focus on brand DNA and integrity, and getting results."

Busy rescuing Mazda

To be sure, it is doubtful that Fields could be Reitzle II if he wanted. Not born into luxury, Fields worked his way through Rutgers University in his native New Jersey before earning a Harvard MBA. Recently, he has been too busy rescuing Mazda, and before that, dealing with hyperinflation in Ford's Argentine operations, to be indulging in the Jaguar lifestyle.

But the skills he displayed at Mazda may be just what the Premier Automotive Group needs.

"One of the problems PAG has is its brand management," said Koji Endo, auto analyst for Credit Suisse First Boston Securities (Japan) Ltd., in Tokyo.

"They have to re-establish those three or four brands, because consumers have been confused. Mark Fields, being a specialist in marketing, might be the best guy to run PAG."

In addition, U.S. luxury-market analyst Susan Jacobs says Fields may have to force Ford's top brass to reassess their high expectations for the Premier Automotive Group.

"PAG grew out of an incredibly prosperous period: The stock market had been booming for five years. I don't think the planning on PAG took into account that there might be a little bit of deflation from those levels," said Jacobs, principal of Susan Jacobs & Associates in Rutherford, N.J.

Ambitious goals

The group's short-range targets are ambitious. Volvo is supposed to grow from 450,000 units a year to 600,000. Jaguar is to leap from 50,000 to 200,000. Land Rover is to expand from about 160,000 to 200,000.

The higher volumes, in turn, are expected to turbocharge Ford profits. Ford expects the Premier Automotive Group to account for 33 percent of its pretax profit in 2005, up from 20 percent in 2000.

"I don't think the old plan is doable, under Reitzle or under anybody. I think they need a change of plan. They'd be more profitable if they grew more slowly," Jacobs said.

"The key for Mark Fields is to step back and reassess what a realistic growth path for PAG would be. If he can examine the dynamics of the luxury market with fresh eyes, he might get PAG and Ford on a more realistic path."

If the job requires Fields to get in the face of CEO Ford and COO Nick Scheele, he has been there before. Some of his accomplishments at Mazda came from spending enough time pounding on the doors at Ford headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., to ensure that Mazda got adequate share of mind, even when his bosses were distracted by their recent Premier Automotive Group acquisitions.

Made tough decisions

Fields' willingness to make tough decisions was tested soon after he became Mazda president in December 1999.

As he reviewed models in the pipeline, Fields was unhappy. Too many cars lacked what he considered critical Mazda DNA, the features and personality that would distinguish a Mazda car from one made by rivals.

His solution: Delay new-product programs until the cars could be reconfigured to make them more specifically Mazdas. It was a painful decision. Fields knew it meant that for more than 12 months, including all of the fiscal year ended March 31, 2002, Mazda would have no new models for the Japanese market, and sales would suffer.

That was exactly what happened, and Fields had to scramble with low-volume limited-edition models to keep sales from tanking completely.

At the same time, Fields faced a more subtle battle.

Mazda's Japanese employees weren't happy about having a CEO who was under 40 and who had been at the company for only 16 months. Rather than try to dictate strategy to them, Fields embarked on an extensive round of business-training sessions, first with senior managers, and eventually with all white-collar workers. By the time he was ready to reveal a restructuring that included closing a plant in Mazda's hometown of Hiroshima, the troops understood the economic fundamentals of why it was necessary.

Fields' restructuring has carried Mazda to a stunning turnaround. On a modest 4 percent rise in revenue, it is expected to post a consolidated, or group, net profit of ¥8.5 billion, or $64 million at current exchange rates, when it releases results for the fiscal year ended March 31.

That marks a sharp swing from a net loss of $1.165 billion a year earlier.

So far, that improvement has been because of cost cutting and currency gains. With the launch of the Atenza this spring, to be known as the 6 in the U.S. market, Mazda will begin a new-product offensive that will determine the extent and duration of its recovery.
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