Bill Ford: Worst CEO In History?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 11, 5:10AM EDT

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Shareholders came at Bill Ford, former CEO and now chairman of Ford (F), like a pack of rabid dogs during the company’s annual meeting.

According to Reuters:

Sam Joanette, a Ford shareholder who said he lost $1 million in Ford stock, said Bill Ford Jr. was "responsible for the destruction of the company."

"You are a failure … You are the worst chairman and CEO to ever lead the company," Joanette said.

Ford might be somewhere on a "worst CEO" list, but he really only made one mistake. He and his succeesor started the down-sizing of Ford much later than GM began its effort. As Ford’s US market share collapsed, it was still carrying too much cost, and the shareholders were beaten up because of the delay. The actual difference in the performance of Ford and GM shares over the last two years is fairly small.

Ford has brought in over $20 billion in new debt to weather the current storm. It may not be enough, but even if it is, common shareholders get pushed back a few rows on the bus.

And, Bill Ford and his family are still in control.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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.