Former senior Ford executive Steven Armstrong has joined Aston Martin as a consultant, as predicted by Autocar.
Armstrong, who retired from Ford at the end of last year, aged 58, previously held senior positions with the firm in Africa, China, Europe, India, the Middle East, North America and South America. He was also COO at Volvo when it was sold to Geely, now itself a minority shareholder in Aston Martin.
On retirement Armstrong took on a series of non-executive appointments across different industries upon retirement and he is understood to have joined Aston Martin in a consultancy role focused on a specific area of the business on a part-time basis.
Armstrong - whose role as a consultant at Aston Martin was confirmed by the firm - joins a team led by former Ferrari boss Amedeo Felisa. While he has kept a low profile, Felisa, 76, is said to have played a significant role in steadying morale and creating a long-term model plan to restore Aston Martin’s fortunes since he joined the firm in May last year.
When Aston Martin replaced Tobias Moers in 2022, Armstrong was linked to the CEO’s role in media reports. However, Felisa took the role.
Last year, Aston Martin issued additional stock to raise around £654m, chiefly to pay down its debt and lower the burden of interest payments it was having to pay. New investors included the Saudi Public Investment Fund (18.7%) and Geely (7.6%).
Since then, the share price dipped as low as 90p, but it's now around 235p, and the majority-shareholding Yew Tree investors led by billionaire and Aston Martin executive chairman Lawrence Stroll have upped their stake to almost 30%.
Additional reporting by Dieter Rencken
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Stroll raised his shareholdings nearl to 30% but if he goes any further he's got to offer to buy the entire company. This also helped raise the share price, which was going down again.
Not been confirmed who is buying up the shares just now, if there's any one party, but it seems that someone is making demand to keep the values high.
Whoever comes in to Aston, in a fixed position or external consultant, has to advise one thing only to save Aston: Sack Marek Reichman.
Reichman designs don't sell enough to keep Aston afloat and planning to release any more based upon him is planning to fail. It is as simple as that.