Volvo Cars appoints David Ibison Senior Vice President Corporate Communications
Volvo Cars appoints David Ibison Senior Vice President Corporate Communications
Volvo Cars, the premium car maker, has announced the appointment of David Ibison as Senior Vice President Corporate Communications. Mr Ibison replaces Jonathan Goodman, who has been appointed Chief Operating Officer of Polestar, Volvo’s performance car company.
Mr Ibison was formerly Vice President Corporate Communications and Global Head of Media Relations at Volvo Cars, having joined the company three and a half years ago in January 2014.
Mr Ibison spent over 20 years as a foreign correspondent in various postings around the world, mainly for the Financial Times (FT). He was most recently the Nordic Bureau Chief for the FT between 2006 and 2010, based in Stockholm.
Prior to that, he was the FT’s deputy bureau chief in Japan between 2000 and 2006 after a stint as a Financial Services and Investment Banking Correspondent in London between 1999 and 2000.
Before joining the FT, Mr Ibison was the Business News Editor for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where he lived between 1992 and 1999. Prior to Hong Kong, he was a financial journalist in London.
Mr Ibison left journalism in 2010 to become a Partner at Kreab, the Nordic region’s largest strategic communications consultancy, based in Stockholm. He also worked as the Managing Partner of the company’s Singapore office in 2010.
“Volvo Cars has a complex and compelling story to tell and I am delighted that a former correspondent with David’s global experience and more recent track record of successful work at Volvo will be helping us to convey the next phase in Volvo’s transformation,” said Hakan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars.
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Volvo Car Group in 2016
For the 2016 financial year, Volvo Car Group recorded an operating profit of 11,014 MSEK (6,620 MSEK in 2015). Revenue over the period amounted to 180,672 MSEK (164,043 MSEK). For the full year 2016, global sales reached a record 534,332 cars, an increase of 6.2 per cent versus 2015. The record sales and operating profit cleared the way for Volvo Car Group to continue investing in its global transformation plan.
About Volvo Car Group
Volvo has been in operation since 1927. Today, Volvo Cars is one of the most well-known and respected car brands in the world with sales of 534,332 cars in 2016 in about 100 countries. Volvo Cars has been under the ownership of the Zhejiang Geely Holding (Geely Holding) of China since 2010. It formed part of the Swedish Volvo Group until 1999, when the company was bought by Ford Motor Company of the US. In 2010, Volvo Cars was acquired by Geely Holding.
As of December 2016, Volvo Cars had over 31,000 employees worldwide. Volvo Cars head office, product development, marketing and administration functions are mainly located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Volvo Cars head office for China is located in Shanghai. The company’s main car production plants are located in Gothenburg (Sweden), Ghent (Belgium), Chengdu and Daqing (China), while engines are manufactured in Skövde (Sweden) and Zhangjiakou (China) and body components in Olofström (Sweden).