Jaguar Land Rover appoints Tata executive as new CEO

PB Balaji will become the first executive from parent company Tata Motors to lead JLR (formerly called Jaguar Land Rover) from November 1.

The Indian-owned British automaker yesterday confirmed Mr Balaji will replace Adrian Mardell, who announced late last week that he would retire by the end of this year.

Mr Balaji has been chief financial officer (CFO) at Tata Motors and a JLR board member since 2017. Prior to that he held various senior financial executive roles around the world with food, drink, personal care and household products giant Hindustan Unilever, before becoming its CFO in 2014.

Although his listed career history is all within the financial sphere, he has a bachelor of mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and a graduate diploma in management and finance from Indian Institute of Management.

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In a statement, chairman of JLR and the Tata Group, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said the board had conducted a candidate search over the last few months and decided on Mr Balaji because he has been with Tata Motors for the “past many years and is familiar with the Company, its strategy and has been working with the JLR leadership team”.

This, he claims, will “will ensure that we continue to accelerate our journey to Reimagine JLR”.

Jaguar Land Rover was established in 2008 when Tata Motors bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford for US$2.2 billion. Along with Aston Martin, Lincoln and Volvo, the British marques were part of the Premier Automotive Group established by Ford’s former Australian chief Jacques Nasser in 1999.

With losses piling up at many of the brands, then-CEO Alan Mullaly began selling off Ford’s collection of luxury auto brands.

While Jaguar and Land Rover never consistently made money under Ford ownership, JLR has been profitable for 10 of its 16 years as part of Tata Motors.

Although it has swung back into the black under the leadership of departing CEO Adrian Mardell, the luxury automaker faces storm clouds on the horizon. Tariffs, which have seemingly been rising and falling on a daily basis in the US, caused the manufacturer to pause shipments to one of its more important export markets.

While many countries are now slapped with a 25 per cent or higher tariff, there’s now an agreement with the UK that sees the first 100,000 cars per year imported from Britain taxed at just 10 per cent. A deal with the EU for a 10 per cent tariff is nearly complete, which will come as a relief to JLR as the Defender is produced in Slovakia.

On top of this, Jaguar’s controversial new brand identity and design direction, as previewed by the Type 00 concept, has garnered plenty of attention and caused much gnashing of teeth on the internet. With three all-new Jaguar production models due to launch from 2026, it remains to be seen whether the marque’s relaunch will be successful, both critically and financially.

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