Presenting Ed Whitacre Jr, GM’s New CEO
Edward Whitacre Jr, the guy who was in charge of General Motors “in the mean time” is now, not surprisingly, the new CEO of GM.
News Dropped this morning on the old AP – and via Detroit News, who says it best: General Motors Co. will announce this morning it is calling off its search for a CEO and naming its chairman and interim CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. as its permanent CEO.
Sources familiar with the matter told The Detroit News that Whitacre will take the top job. Top GM officials said at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit earlier this month that Whitacre, a former CEO and chairman of AT&T, was likely to keep the top job permanently.
The Obama administration, which named Whitacre chairman of GM’s board last summer, strongly supports the move. The Treasury Department holds a 61 percent majority stake in GM after it swapped most of its $50 billion in government loans.
GM CEO Fritz Henderson unexpectedly resigned on Dec. 1, and Whitacre vowed to run the company on an interim basis as the company searched for a new CEO. Whitacre installed a new chief financial officer, Chris Liddell, who was CFO at Microsoft Corp.
Whitacre said last month he wasn’t planning to stay long-term as chief executive.
“I’m enjoying it, I’ll say that,” Whitacre said in mid-December. “It’s a terrific company, great future, great people. Do I want to do it long-term? I told the board no. But I haven’t defined that. I can’t define that myself.”
But Whitacre did take other steps that suggested he was staying for a while. He moved out of the Marriott Hotel at the Renaissance Center and into a downtown Detroit apartment.
Whitacre has named a number of other top advisers and executives in recent weeks, including new lobbyists. He also named GM board member Steve Girsky as a special adviser.
He also has shaken up long-held assumptions at GM, started holding regular Monday meetings with key executives and made boosting market share and growing the business a top priority. Whitacre had said he was shocked that only Henderson was responsible for profit and loss at GM. He has also made holding executives accountable for results a mandate.
Whitacre has also been candid that GM’s reputation took a hit in accepting a $50 billion government bailout. He has offered a more conciliatory tone toward GM’s closing auto dealers and vowed to repay GM’s outstanding $5.7 billion in government loans by the end of June.
Whitacre told GM executives soon after arriving that he was most comfortable as CEO.
“I don’t know how to be a chairman and not a CEO,” Whitacre said, according to the Associated Press. “I’m a guy that likes to be in charge.”
GM faced a number of hurdles in selecting a new CEO from the outside. One was paying enough to attract a top leader, since the company is under government pay limitations because it got a government bailout.
GM began notifying people of the decision last week, including the White House, but the government had no role in the CEO decision.
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