Recommended Reading - Ford Announces Six Candidates As Mulally's Future Successor

Amy Wilson and Richard Truett of Automotive News wrote a story today that examined six potential internal candidates that might rise to ultimately succeed Alan Mulally as Ford's CEO. The six candidates listed were as follows:

Lewis Booth, EVP in charge of Europe and Premier Automotive Group

Jim Farley - Group VP of marketing and communications

Mark Fields - President of the Americas

Joe Heinricks - Group VP of global manufacturing

Don Leclair - CFO

Stephen Odell - COO Ford of Europe

Let's hope they can do more for Ford than Mulally and the family have done. With the Automotive News story panic embraced Ford headquarters. According to a story by Alex Taylor III in CNN Money,

Immediately, the company went into panic mode.

"I'm not going to go there," said one of the purported candidates, Americas boss Mark Fields, when Automotive News asked him about the report. "I'm going to let the chips fall where they may."

Laymon's untimely disclosure will have the following negative effects on the company:

... It immediately sets up a horse race among the six candidates that could create unnecessary conflict and backbiting. Ford has a history of corporate infighting going back decades (Harry Bennett and Henry Ford II, Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca, Bill Ford and Jac Nasser) and hardly needs any more of it.

It immediately makes Mulally a lame duck, even though his contract doesn't expire until 2011. Scuttlebutt around the copy machine will now focus more on who will replace Mulally than what Mulally himself is trying to accomplish.

Stay tuned to see how the company manages to handle this messy announcement.

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