Mardell arrived in the role in November 2022 as Interim Chief Executive Officer after serving as Chief Financial Officer for three years. The position of CEO was then made permanent after 8 months, but only on a three-year contract, which has now come to an end. Adrian Mardell has subsequently decided to retire.
Adrian Mardell has presided over some of the most transformative years in recent history within JLR. He inherited a series of supply chain and demand-related problems, large amounts of debt and losses, but Mardell successfully managed to guide the manufacturer to a remarkable financial turnaround. Today, JLR is posting the best profit figures in over a decade and will reach ten per cent profit margins within the next year.
That period in time also saw the reimagination strategy start to mature with the formation of the ‘House of Brands’ strategy which saw changes to the corporate and model logos for all of the marques under the JLR roof.
To Jaguar fans, the most significant moment of Mardell’s time will always be seen as the launch of the Type 00 concept car. As part of that launch, Adrian Mardell’s own passion for Jaguar was featured front and centre, with the global launches to the press featuring a wistful, soft-focus video of Adrian recalling his first interaction with an E-type that was in the garage of a customer of his painter and decorator father.
Adrian Mardell has been upbeat about the prospects for Jaguar following its rebrand, convinced of waiting lists and a bright future for Jaguar as an aspirational fashion-focused luxury brand in an emerging new automotive market globally.
Whilst the future looks bright on the face of it, the ever-present challenges. The most recent being the imposition of new tariffs on cars imported into the crucial US market, which remains JLR’s biggest market. If the UK secured a trade deal to reduce the tariffs to 10% for the first 100,000 cars shipped, then 25% thereafter, the impact on profit margins in that market will likely be noticeable. JLR owners Tata committed themselves to UK production when they secured a £500 million grant from the UK Government to build a battery factory in Somerset. Still, some Defender and Discovery models are built in Slovakia, which means they will fall under the European trade deal for US tariffs.
We await the announcement of Mardell’s replacement soon; meanwhile, whoever takes the job will have to consider how they navigate a world where they are required to produce EVs by law, but are selling them into an increasingly volatile market.
