Former BMW executive Ralf Speth has been appointed as JLR's new CEO succeeding David Smith who resigned in January.

Speth, 54,  will report to Carl-Peter Forster, the former General Motors Europe chief who was appointed Group CEO of Tata Motors earlier this week. Tata bought Jaguar Land Rover in 2008.

Speth was most recently head of global operations at Linde Group, the German industrial gases and engineering company,  but he has 22 years experience in the automotive industry, firstly with BMW, where he was vice president of Land Rover when the German company owned the brand.

When Ford acquired Land Rover in 2000, Speth became director of production, quality and planning for the Premier Automotive Group where he worked closely with current Linde chairman Wolfgang Reitzle with whom he had also worked at BMW.

The appointments of Forster and Speth is a further step towards Tata Motors being recognised as a truly global manufacturing company. Tata vice chairman Ravi Kant said that the new arrivals would enhance the position and reputation of the JLR brands in line with Tata's long term strategy.