Ford to Cut Staff 10%, but Embattled CEO Fields Will Keep Salary

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 11:59AM EST · Published May 16, 6:30AM EDT

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Ford to Cut Staff 10%, but Embattled CEO Fields Will Keep Salary — © courtesy of Ford Motor Co.

[cnxvideo id=”655414″ placement=”ros”]In a situation that happens regularly, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) will cut 10% of its worldwide workforce, but CEO Mark Fields, who caused the company’s problems in the first place, will keep his job and his salary.

According to Reuters, reports of a 10% across the board cut may not be true. The news agency says it will be 10% of the salaried workforce in Asia and North America. At any rate, the cuts will be in the thousands.

CEO Fields made $21.1 million last year and nearly $19 million the two years prior. William Clay Ford, the executive chairman, made $13.9 million. The sums are extraordinary given Ford’s problems.

Over the past two years, Ford’s shares are down 30%. Shares of rival General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) are off 4% during the same period, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU) shares are up 9%.

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Ford has bungled several opportunities, leading to among other things a lack of success in the critical European and Chinese markets. Ford has to thrive in these markets to be a global success, but its market share in both regions is mediocre. Its U.S. business has slipped. Its domestic sales are off 5.1% to 826,981 over the first four months. The figure would be worse if sales of its flagship full-sized pickup F-Series were not up 7.4% to 275,938.

Ford also has been slow into the driverless and electric car businesses. Google and Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) are widely seen as well ahead of Ford. So is GM, which has launched the inexpensive electric car the Chevy Bolt. Several other companies, including BMW and Volvo, are also considered well ahead of Ford.

According to the Detroit Free Press, at Ford’s annual meeting:

Ford assured shareholders that company’s stock price matters both to the Ford family and Ford’s top management but pointed out that Wall Street has historically undervalued automakers, even when they make millions in profits.

That is if the car maker is Ford.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.