AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)05/27 Report--

On May 26th Aston Martin, the UK luxury sports car maker, announced that Andy Palmer, chief executive, would step down and be replaced by Tobias Tobias Moers, the current chief executive of Mercedes-AMG. The appointment will take effect on August 1st. In the meantime, Keith Stanton, production director of Aston Martin, will succeed Palmer as interim chief operating officer.

According to the data, Morse is a senior automotive industry professional who has worked as a senior manager in the German carmaker Daimler for 25 years. Since October 2013, he has served as Chairman, CEO and Chief Technology Officer of the Management Committee of Mercedes-AMG Co., Ltd.

CEO Palmer's "sad departure" has a lot to do with Aston Martin's lacklustre performance in recent years.

Aston Martin's cumulative global sales in 2019 were 5819, down 7 per cent from 2018, according to the data. Aston Martin said that due to the market downturn, there has been a decline in demand for luxury cars in Europe, especially in the UK, resulting in poor sales, which continued throughout 2019.

Even before COVID-19 's outbreak, Aston Martin's sales fell, losing 104.3 million pounds (919 million yuan) for the whole of 2019 and 119 million pounds (1.038 billion yuan) in the first quarter of this year. Andy Palmer has said publicly that Aston Martin's supply chain has been disrupted by the outbreak in Europe, making it difficult for even the Chinese market, which has nearly 30 per cent growth potential, to support Aston Martin's performance.

Aston Martin has been in the doldrums since IPO in October 2018, and Aston Martin has been dealing with falling sales and a collapse in investor confidence. When it went public, Aston Martin was valued at about £5 billion. Now it is valued at about £1.5 billion and its share price has fallen 90 per cent.

In an effort to ease the pressure on performance, Aston Martin reached an agreement with Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll at the end of January that the consortium led by Lawrence Strol would buy a 16.7 per cent stake for £182 million (about Rmb1.658 billion), which could rise to 20 per cent after completing a total of £500m.

It is understood that Aston Martin DBX SUV has become the key to the company's "turnaround". Before receiving financial assistance from a consortium led by Lawrence Strol, Aston Martin was unable to support its production due to financial problems. With financial assistance from Lawrence Strol, Aston Martin was able to start production of the DBX SUV. At present, Aston Martin's top priority is to promote the smooth progress of the brand's first SUV product, the Aston Martin DBX, in preparation for delivery this summer.

As Aston Martin's first SUV model, the car was unveiled at last year's Guangzhou auto show for 2.378 million yuan, including the Bentley Timber, Lamborghini Urus and Porsche Cayenne.

DBX SUV shoulders the mission of turning losses into profits, and the Chinese market is the main battlefield of this model, which will play a key role in the development of the first SUV model. However, due to the impact of the epidemic, the development of the first SUV model is still full of variables.

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