Forex

Ford managed to get one monkey off its back when it took a big loss in 2006 to buy out thousands of employee contracts. But while that helped the bottom line in 2007, sales of cars and trucks are still sputtering. Ford's market share in the U.S. continued to fall since it lacked a subcompact offering to make up for decreasing demand for gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs.

The silver lining is that CEO Alan Mulally was able to get his big restructuring program started, which resulted in the recent sale of Jaguar and Land Rover to India's Tata Motors