Ford goes Full Austerity

Today’s headline – Ford – is neither a triumph nor failure.

This time of year, economists and analysts trawl through company reports, hawkishly eyeing up the losers and winners from the past year, but today’s headline – Ford – is neither a triumph nor failure. The US car giant’s better-than-expected profits in North America, with revenues up 13 per cent, are buttressed against a 21 per cent decline in Europe.

However, the US car giant needs to be more worried about its performance across the water. Ford’s sales on the continent have plummeted to levels last seen in 1995 and what is worrying is that Ford’s executives aren’t worried. The company today released the bland comment citing that, “The business environment remains uncertain, and Ford will continue to monitor the situation in Europe and take further action as necessary”.

Such a statement, void of commitment, will do little to calm the company’s investors, let alone its European plant workers. Factory redundancies before Christmas caused riots in Genk, Belgium. In the UK job losses will also result out of plant closures in Southampton and Dagenham, East London.

So why is Ford not overly concerned of its continental money well? In October it rolled out its “European Transformation Plan”. This plan writes off afore mentioned factory closures as “cost efficiency actions”. It also forecast today’s headline European losses as the company consolidates assembly plants, introduces a new cars and focuses on increasing its brand and cutting costs.

Overall, it appears that Ford has implemented a policy akin to that of our Coalition Government. Austerity is the key word and plans to be for the next half decade for Ford’s European operations. Poor growth results will be ignored as unfortunate consequences of a larger plan as Ford, held up by US profits, will continue to cut expenditure in Europe.

While it comes as no surprise that Europe has been a stagnant market for cars since 2007, the UK has actually bucked that trend with sales hitting a four year high. And our most popular car – the Ford Focus.