Come November 1 PB Balaji will become the first executive from parent company Tata Motors to lead Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).
The automakers confirmed Mr Balaji will replace Adrian Mardell, who announced late last week he would retire by the end of the year.
Mr Balaji has been chief financial officer 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 Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Jaguar Land Rover, as well as the Tata Group, said the board had been doing a candidate search over the last few months and decided on Mr Balaji 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 Australian CEO 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 brands.
While Jaguar and Land Rover never consistently made money under Ford’s ownership, the JLR has been profitable for 10 of its 16 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, which sees the first 100,000 cars per year 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 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 production cars set 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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