BC Business
Randall MacEwen will start as CEO of Ballard Power Systems on October 6.
1979: Geoffrey Ballard, a geophysicist and combustion engine-hater, moves from Arizona to Vancouver and founds Ballard Research—today Ballard Power Systems Inc. The company wouldn’t take off in earnest until the tech boom of the late 1990s.
2000: Ballard hits the peak of its success: the company’s stock spends the year at over $100 a share, breaking $150 in March and again in October. The company is named a pioneer in the race to replace the traditional combustion engine with an env
October 2005: Ballard appoints John Sheridan, former president of Bell Canada, as acting CEO. By February 2006, after repositioning the company and “getting some momentum,” the board asks Sheridan to stay on long term.
In a 2006 inte
2008: Ballard records its only profit in its 24-year history, following the sale of its automotive division assets to Daimler Ford. The following year, the company leads the province’s corporate sector in terms of job losses (double-digit drops
September 2013 : Ballard enters an $11-million multi-year agreement with Chinese manufacturer Azure Hydrogen to build zero-emission fuel cell buses, as part of its pivot in recent years to provide engineering services on fuel cell stacks to com
This October Randall MacEwen, a lawyer by training with a decade’s experience as an executive at various Ontario-based clean-technology companies, will take the helm at Ballard Power Systems Inc., succeeding current president and CEO, John Sheridan.
Sheridan announced his impending retirement earlier this year, after eight years leading the company. He will stay on as a board adviser until 2015.
Ballard, which has invested over $1 billion to date in fuel cell batteries for automobiles and buses, saw a minor uptick in its fortunes—and stock price—in the last two years, signing deals with Big Auto manufacturers such as Volkswagen for its engineering services.
More than a decade on, it’s still far from its success at the height of the 2000 tech boom, when its stock spent a year over $100.
Click through the slideshow above for a look at the company MacEwen will be running.