TOKYO: Toyota Motor Corp. has suffered its second high-profile defection in little more than a month after Ford Motor Co poached a senior executive from the Japanese automaker’s luxury Lexus division.
The number two US automaker announced late Thursday that it had hired Lexus group vice president Jim Farley, who has spent nearly two decades at Toyota.
Farley, 45, will become Ford’s head of marketing and communications. “We are thrilled to welcome one of the most successful and talented leaders in the industry to the Ford Motor Company team,” Ford president and chief executive Alan Mulally said in a statement.
The announcement comes about a month after Chrysler LLC announced that it had poached Toyota veteran Jim Press, head of the automaker’s North America operations, just months after he was made Toyota’s first foreign director. Toyota said it had promoted Mark Templin, the vice president of its Scion division, which targets young American drivers, to succeed Farley.
The Japanese automaker played down the latest defection, saying it still had lots of talented executives in the United States.
“Farley’s selection shows how highly the industry prizes the talent, knowledge and experience of (Toyota) associates,” Jim Lentz, executive vice president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, said in a statement. Analysts said the departure was unlikely to have a big impact on Toyota’s fast-growing US sales.
The loss of the two executives was a setback to Toyota, “but not a very serious one”, as the main reason for Toyota’s success in the United States was its high quality cars, said Fitch Ratings analyst Tatsuya Mizuno. reuters