Ford boss Alan Mulally is named CEO of the Year.
Ford CEO Alan Mulally has been judged by a jury of his peers – and declared “2011 Chief Executive of the Year.”
Credited with guiding the second-largest of Detroit’s hometown makers to an unexpectedly strong turnaround since joining the company in autumn 2006, Mulally was honored by CEO Magazine, which collected nominations from its 147,000 readers. The former Boeing executive joins an elite group that previously included former Microsoft boss Bill Gates, GE’s Jack Welch and Southwest Airlines’ Herb Kelleher.
“The success he showed in the face of incredible difficulty was just extraordinary,” said James Turley, a member of the award selection committee and himself chairman and CEO of Ernst & Young. “The foresight,” Turley added, “showed.”
Other members of the committee included chief executives from companies including Office Depot and MetLife.
Mulally has received an array of honors in recent years, reflecting Ford’s dramatic turnaround. When he joined the maker it was rapidly running out of cash and had to line up a multi-billion-dollar credit line that required the unusual step of mortgaging the company’s assets. But that helped carry the maker through the automotive downturn of 2008 – 2010. Now, one of Mulally’s biggest goals is to pay off that debt, the company chipping away a billion dollars or more per quarter.
Mulally succeeds Monsanto Chief Executive Hugh Grant, who was named CEO of the Year in 2010. Grant hailed the Ford boss by terming “the turnaround and triumph of Ford…an amazing success story, due largely to his talents, leadership and courage.”
While Ford is today considered the healthiest and strongest of the Detroit makers it is not without challenges, including the debt load, as well as a sudden slide in its quality ratings. The latest J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey, released last week, found Ford falling to 23rd among industry manufacturers. It was ranked 5th in 2010, the highest of any mainstream brand. Power analysts pointed to problems with Ford’s high-tech infotainment technology as a major cause for its decline. (Click Here for more on Ford’s quality decline.)
Nonetheless, Mulally has hailed the use of advanced technology, such as Sync, as critical to the maker’s future. And his push into the digital world has won both the company – and the executive – substantial attention from the high-tech world. Mulally served as keynote speaker at last January’s Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, his third tour in that role since joining Ford – matching the number of times Microsoft’s Gates has served as CES keynoter.
For his part, Mulally showed his usual, boyish enthusiasm as he responded to the CEO of the Year award.
“So neat for our extended Ford enterprise and our industry,” he told the Detroit News in an e-mail, “an industry that is so important for so many people and our country.”
CEO Magazine asked readers to name their most admired chief executive. The names 10 most frequently nominated CEOs were then sent to a selection committee for final judgement.