UPDATED
Bad news from Car Magazine overnight…..
Jaguar Land Rover today announced a raft of management changes. Phil Popham, currently MD of Land Rover, is global sales and service director; John Edwards, the European MD, becomes global brand director of Land Rover; Adrian Hallmark quits Saab and comes back to the UK as global brand director of Jaguar; and Mike Wright is new executive director of JLR (Jaguar Land Rover)
UPDATE: A release from JLR confirms the appointment, which is effective as of December 1st (Thanks Dave!).
Adrian Hallmark, joins the company as Global Brand Director, Jaguar. Hallmark, 48, who will have global responsibility for the Jaguar brand, joins Jaguar Land Rover from Saab Automobile, where he was Executive Sales Director; prior to this he held senior management positions at Porsche, Bentley and Volkswagen.
Adrian Hallmark’s appointment was the coup of the year when it happened, a great signal of faith in the future prospects for Saab.
His resignation after just seven months, then, has to be a cause for concern.
Maybe he simply got a Godfather offer from Carl-Peter Forster, the former GM Europe head who’s now CEO at Tata Group? Maybe Victor’s renowned work ethic and drive were a touch too much?
I sure hope it wasn’t simply a matter of some extra dollars per week. The Saab opportunity was a unique one, resuscitating an established and respected brand that had been so neglected. One would think a challenge like that would appeal to someone with Hallmark’s CV. It’d be interesting to find out.
Hallmark’s successor is yet to be announced, but I’m sure they’re hunting far and wide even as we speak. Whoever it is, they’ll have a tough job with big responsibilities. Hallmark was in the midst of establishing new Saab sales operations in China, Australia, Russia and a number of markets in South America.
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