Tata appoints former GM Europe chief Forster as CEO

Tata Motors Ltd. hired Carl-Peter Forster, the former head of General Motors Co.’s European division, as chief executive officer to help the Indian company manage global operations after purchasing Jaguar Land Rover.Forster, 55, will be responsible for the two British luxury brands as well as Tata’s truck, bus and car operations, the company said today in a statement. Forster will work from Tata headquarters in Mumbai, spokesman Debasis Ray said in a telephone interview.

Forster faces the challenge of boosting global sales after falling demand at the U.K. luxury-vehicle unit pushed India’s biggest truck manufacturer to a loss for the 2009 fiscal year, its first consolidated annual loss in at least seven years. Tata hired KPMG International and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants to help trim costs at Jaguar Land Rover, which it bought from Ford Motor Co. in 2008 for $2.5 billion.”Tata Motors needed someone from the global automotive industry to run its operations as it’s no longer a company confined just to India,” said Deepesh Rathore, a New Delhi- based analyst with IHS Global Insight Inc. “Since they plan to substantially grow the global business, they are hiring the right people who know those markets.”

Deliveries Rise:-

Tata Motors’ deliveries rose 13 percent to 681,480 vehicles for the first 10 months of fiscal 2010, which ends in March. Growth at the maker of the Nano, the world’s cheapest car, was led by a 32 percent advance in commercial vehicle sales, while Jaguar and Land Rover deliveries fell a combined 20 percent.”Forster has quite a good track record, mainly at the premium end,” said Colin Couchman, an analyst at IHS Global Insight in London. “One of the big challenges will be to transfer Tata’s strength in India to other markets.”

Forster left GM in November after opposing the Detroit automaker’s decision to back out of an agreement to sell a majority stake in the German Opel unit to a group led by Magna International Inc. Before joining GM in 2001, Forster was responsible for manufacturing at Bayerische Motoren Werke AG.The executive’s experience in the luxury-car segment should help him carve out a niche for Jaguar Land Rover and avoid direct competition with BMW and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz, the world’s largest luxury-car makers, Couchman said. A turnaround will “pretty obviously” require that Forster close one of three plants in the U.K., he said.Forster wasn’t available for comment, according to a spokesman.

New Models:-

The two British marques are in the midst of freshening up their product lineup. Jaguar will introduce the new top-of-the- line XJ sedan in 2010, after rolling out the XK coupe last year and mid-sized XF sedan in 2008. Land Rover is planning to start deliveries of the new LRX compact sport-utility vehicle in 2011.Jaguar Land Rover said Jan. 25 that Chief Executive Officer David Smith would leave the company after less than two years at the top job. Smith became CEO in June 2008 after Tata took over the unit from Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford. He was the chief financial officer at Jaguar before the Tata purchase.”Tata Motors expects that Forster’s induction will greatly facilitate its ambition toward being a truly international company,” Chairman Ratan Tata said in the statement.

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Source: Business week 15/2/2010

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