The Ford Motor Company

The Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in UK. Ford’s former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to Tata Motors of India in March, 2008.In 2010 Ford sold Volvo to Geely Automobile. Ford discontinued the Mercury brand at the end of 2010.

Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines. Henry Ford’s methods came to be known around the world as Fordism in 1914.

Ford is the second largest automaker in U.S. and the fourth-largest in the world based on annual vehicle sales, directly behind Volkswagen Group. At the end of 2009, Ford was the third largest automaker in Europe (after Volkswagen and PSA Peugeot Citroen). Ford is the eighth-ranked overall American-based company in the 2010 Fortune 500 list, based on the global revenues in 2009 of $118.3 billion. In 2008, Ford produced 5.532 million automobiles and employed about 213,000 employees at around 90 plants and facilities worldwide. During the automotive crisis, Ford’s worldwide unit volume dropped to 4.817 million in 2009. Despite the adverse conditions, Ford ended 2009 with a net profit of 2.7 billion. Starting in 2007, Ford received more initial quality survey awards from J.D. Power and Associates than any other automaker. Five of Ford’s vehicles ranked at the top of their categories and fourteen vehicles ranked in the top three.

Ford went public on Jan 17, 1956 and has been for less than half of its 100-year life. It took so long for Ford to keep private because Henry Ford never wanted his company to go public. However, nowadays Ford Motor stock has become one of the world’s most widely...