Ford chief executive Bill Ford has apparently ruled out seeking court protection from creditors according to remarks made in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
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In an interview with the newspaper Bill Ford dismissed any talk of bankruptcy being a threat, saying “it’s not an option.”
Standard & Poor’s cut its rating on Ford debt deeper into junk territory on Wednesday, lowering it one notch to single-B-plus from double-B-minus and saying “2006 would be a more difficult year for Ford than previously anticipated.”
According to Reuters, Bill Ford told the paper the company had no interest in taking itself private, despite reports that it has studied doing so amid a falling share price and a flurry of private-equity-backed deals.
Since Ford detailed in January its “Way Forward” restructuring campaign to make North American auto operations profitable again by 2008, industry conditions have got tougher than Ford planned for, the paper quoted him as saying.
He said sales of sport utility vehicles had declined faster than planned for amid higher fuel prices and that prices of metals, plastics and other materials had also risen faster.
“I think we had some fairly conservative assumptions in the Way Forward plan, just because the world never develops like you think it is going to, and the world has gotten tougher,” he said.
