REUTERS - Ford Motor Co, which earlier this week named turnaround expert James Hackett as its chief executive officer, announced replacements for some of its key executive positions.
Raj Nair, currently the company's executive vice president, product development, and chief technical officer, will take over as president, North America, effective June 1, the company said on Thursday.
The No.2 U.S. automaker named Steven Armstrong as the new head of Europe, Middle East and Africa and Peter Fleet as the new head of Asia Pacific and China.
Armstrong is currently the chief operating officer for Ford of Europe, while Fleet is in charge of sales and marketing for the Asia-Pacific region.
The company announced a broad management shake-up on Monday in response to investors' growing unease about the U.S. automaker's slumping stock price and its ability to counter threats from longtime rivals and Silicon Valley.
Hackett had then said there would be more appointments "later in the week that will round out my team."
The company announced plans to cut 1,400 white-collar positions last week and is expected to look at further significant cost cuts in the coming months.
Hackett, who replaced Mark Fields, is the latest in a line of non-family CEOs brought in with a mandate to change the management culture at one of the auto industry's oldest institutions.
Ford's shares were unchanged in premarket trading. They had fallen 9.6 percent this year through Wednesday's close.
The stock is down about 36 percent since Fields took over three years ago at the peak of the U.S. auto industry's recovery from the crisis last decade.
(Reporting by Sweta Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
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