Aston Martin has appointed its third chief executive in three years, with Tobias Moers stepping down after only two years in charge.
Moers will leave the board of the British carmaker with immediate effect but will stay until the end of July to “support the leadership team with a smooth transition”, Aston Martin Lagonda announced.
The former Ferrari boss Amedeo Felisa will replace him as chief executive. Felisa joined Aston Martin’s board as a non-executive director in July 2021.
Aston Martin, known as the maker of sports cars used in the James Bond film franchise, has gone through many turbulent periods in its 109-year history. Its latest problems began with a stock market listing in 2018 that quickly went sour as high listing costs forced it to look for new funding.
The fashion billionaire Lawrence Stroll stepped in to bail out the company in early 2020, forcing out the former Nissan chief operating officer Andy Palmer and poaching Moers from Daimler’s high-performance unit, Mercedes-AMG, to take over.
Moers has overseen a period of retrenchment by Aston Martin, as it sought to reduce the number of cars left with dealers – which Stroll saw as a key step to restore an element of exclusivity to the brand even as it tries to more than double sales to 10,000 a year.
However, financial results for the first three months of 2022 showed the company continued to struggle. Losses before tax for the quarter almost tripled to £112m. It made revenues of £232m, suggesting a long way to go to hit its target of £2bn annually.
Felisa, who led the Italian maker of sports cars Ferrari for eight years as chief executive, will oversee the electrification of Aston Martin’s range, and will reorganise the company’s structure and make appointments in the coming weeks. Among those is Roberto Fedeli, another former Ferrari executive announced as Aston Martin’s chief technical officer on Wednesday.
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Stroll, who has the role of executive chair, said Moers “joined Aston Martin at a critical time for the company and brought significant discipline to its operations. The benefit of these actions is clear in the improved operating performance of the company and in our great new product launches.
“Now, there is a need for the business to enter a new phase of growth with a new leadership team and structure to ensure we deliver on our goals.”
Stroll said Felisa has “extensive knowledge of both Aston Martin’s business and the wider automotive industry with an excellent track record and previous experience of leading a major ultra-luxury car manufacturer”.