Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has picked former Renault boss Thierry Bollore as its next chief executive, with the aim to return Britain’s biggest automaker to profit after a big hit from the coronavirus crisis.
Bollore took over at Renault in January 2019 following the arrest of Carlos Ghosn, but was ousted from the French automaker in October.
Bollore will take over at JLR on September 10, replacing Ralf Speth, whose tenure ends after over 10 years.
“It will be my privilege to lead this fantastic company through what continues to be the most testing time of our generation,” Bollore said on Tuesday.
JLR was hit this year first due to disruption to sales in China and then by coronavirus led lockdowns throughout Europe and North America as the COVID-19 outbreak spread across the world.
In 2019, it cut jobs to address declining diesel sales, which helped it return to profit. But as the coronavirus crisis started to emerge, the automaker saw a pretax loss of 422 million pounds ($543 million) for the year ended March 31, 2020.
The automaker has already taken steps to deal with the crisis, including agreeing on a loan facility of around $700 million with lenders in China and more staff reductions.
The automaker is also in talks with the British government over potential support.
Bollore takes over a business that built more than 500,000 cars in 2019/20. He will be dealing with a number of tasks, including how to handle the Jaguar brand, which underperforms the Land Rover marque, how swiftly it is required to electrify its lineup, and a potential hit from Brexit if trade barriers take place.
JLR has a partnership with the German automaker BMW on electrification and parent company Tata Motors recommitted to the company recently.
“Tata Group recognizes and values Jaguar Land Rover’s future potential highly,” said JLR Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran previously this month.
“That is why this company is central to our global automotive presence – a presence that we intend to develop for years to come,” Chandrasekaran added.
