Ford divests shares in Mazda

Mazda announced late last night that it will acquire a 20 per cent stake in its own business, purchasing the shares from embattled US manufacturer, Ford. This market trading strategy will immediately free up capital for Ford, which will see its interest in Mazda reduced from 33.4 per cent to just above 13 per cent.

According to both Ford and Mazda, the change in holdings will have no effect on the strategic alliance between the two companies.

"The sale of Mazda shares by our partner, Ford, will not result in any change in Mazda's strategic direction and we will continue to accelerate our product-led brand improvement and cost innovation initiatives," said Mazda's Chairman, President and CEO, Hisakazu Imaki.

"We will continue our strategic relationship through our ongoing joint ventures with Ford, as well as the sharing of platforms and powertrains."

"This agreement allows Ford to raise capital that will help fund our product-led transformation, and at the same time, allows Ford and Mazda to continue our successful strategic relationship in the best interest of both companies," said Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally of the change.

Ford and Mazda's strategic relationship stretches back 30 years now, and has been an especially productive relationship in this country, with Ford relying heavily on branded models built by Mazda in Japan and Thailand to populate the company's small-car and light-commercial product ranges.

Ford Australia has sourced its small and mid-sized cars from Europe or South Africa in recent years, but the Ranger pick-up is built by Mazda in Thailand and Broadmeadows has about 500 or so engineers working currently on the T6 light commercial vehicle project -- a vehicle that will replace both the Mazda BT-50 and the Ford (non-US) Ranger in markets all around the world.

Ford's sale of shares back to Mazda and its business partners has no effect on the T6 project, according to Ford Australia Communications Manager, Sinead McAlary.

"We will continue the partnership with Mazda on a lot of platform-sharing and technologies, etc -- and the T6 project falls in under that," she told the Carsales Network.

"Other than that, we are in general contact with Mazda here, but it's not like we have a joint plant in Australia or anything like that -- so the T6 project is the biggest joint program we have here."

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