From Bloomberg, International Herald Tribune

Ford Motor shares will be in focus Tuesday after the company’s chief executive, William Ford Jr., said that the company was in trouble in North America. Ford stock in the United States has fallen 12 percent over the past 12 months.

Ford wrote in an internal memo and said again during an interview with Newsweek magazine that the company was working to accelerate a restructuring program. Ford, the second-biggest U.S. automaker after General Motors, already announced in January that it would cut 30,000 jobs and close 14 plants in North America by 2012.

"A turnaround is taking a very long time to materialize," said Yvan de la Fressange, who manages assets at Gutzwiller One Fund, including 250,000 Ford shares, in Basel, Switzerland. "The actions they’re taking now are the right ones and will probably work in the long term, but it’s going to be a hard road." The company did not expect the speed and severity of the rise in oil prices, William Ford said during the Newsweek interview. De la Fressange said, "The rise in oil prices really shot Ford in the foot because it’s caused demand for SUVs and trucks to plummet."

Ford has said that the announcement of a further restructuring plan this month is an acceleration of the January plan. The company has broadened restructuring beyond North America. Last week, Ford put its profitable Aston Martin luxury-car unit in Britain up for sale. The automaker is debating the fate of its Jaguar and Land Rover luxury-vehicle subsidiaries. Land Rover became profitable in 2005, but Jaguar is losing money. William Ford, great-grandson of the company’s founder, Henry Ford, became chief executive in October 2001 and introduced his first job-cutting plan in January 2002. Ford reported a $3.49 billion profit for 2004.

Net income slid to $2 billion last year, even as profits from car and truck loans made up for automotive losses. North America is the company’s largest auto unit, where sales of profitable sport utility vehicles fell. The interview mirrored comments that Ford made in an e-mail message to employees on Friday, in which he said the company’s business model was no longer enough to sustain profitability.

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