Jaguar Land Rover parent Tata Motors has named Thierry Bollore as the new CEO of the UK luxury automaker.
Bollore, who was fired from his post as Renault CEO last October, will replace Ralf Speth as JLR boss starting on September 10, the company said in a stock exchange filing.
"It will be my privilege to lead this fantastic company through what continues to be the most testing time of our generation," Bollore said in the filing.
Speth, who turns 65 in September, will retire from the post and become the automaker's non-executive vice chairman. He has led JLR since 2010.
He turned around the struggling UK automaker that Tata bought from Ford Motor in 2008.
Under Speth, JLR pursued a major global expansion, adding new factories in China, Brazil and Slovakia, however, the automaker has struggled recently.
JLR was hit this year first by disruption to sales in China, the world's biggest car market, and then by lockdowns in key markets across Europe and North America.
In 2019, JLR cut costs to address tumbling diesel sales which helped it return to profit before being hit by the pandemic, which contributed to a pretax loss of 422 million pounds ($530 million) for the financial year to March 31.
Bollore takes over a business that built a little more than 500,000 cars in 2019-20. He faces a number of tasks, including how to handle the Jaguar brand, which underperforms the Land Rover marque, how quickly to electrify its lineup and a potential hit from Brexit if trade barriers are imposed.
JLR has a partnership with BMW on electrification and parent company Tata Motors recently recommitted to the company.
"Tata Group recognizes and values Jaguar Land Rover's future potential highly," JLR Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran said earlier 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."
