Rick Wagoner Resigns
 

GM CEO Rick Wagoner to resign - Mar. 29, 2009

Effective immediately, Rick Wagoner will step down as CEO of General Motors. While I'd like to say something nice about him, I can't. In the nearly 11 years that he has been their Chief Executive officer, GM's share in the North American market has been nearly halved, the company's stock has fallen 98-percent, they lost their lead of both the nation's and world's largest automaker to Toyota, and ruined the company's reputation for innovation by relying too much on their SUV's and forgoing truly innovative concepts like the EV1 program.

COO Fritz Henderson is expected to be named as the interim CEO, and one can only hope that they get a Alan Mulally caliber leader to turn this ship around...if it can even be turned around.

Agreed.

Wagoner basically was at the controls during GM's race to the bottom.

It was one series of misques to the next - from not selling Hummer while there was a market for it, to putting all his eggs into the SUV / Truck market, to spending 5 billion dollars on the aborted FIAT deal - Wagoner was the guy in charge.

The only guy I can think of that might be able to save GM from themselves is Carlos Ghosn - the CEO of Nissan. When Ghosn took over Nissan, they were in debt up to the ears (something like 20 billion) and only 2 or 3 of their 35 models were profitable.

Ghosn came in and turned Nissan around in a year (mind you, even Nissan is suffering these days)

They should replace the entire top executive management and design groups for both GM and Chrysler if you ask me. Rename the companies. Demolish their headquarters and build anew. 90% of their cars and trucks plain suck compared to the competition. I like driving responsive cars and don't like having to feel shamed into buying inferior, boring cars just because they are American-made. Don't let the door hit you, Dick.

Apparently Dick dicked them all...good riddance.

If anyone is able to rebuild and revive GM, and the U.S. auto industry, it will rekindle my faith in humanity. I hope they find a team that can do that.

Yes, he's a dick, but why should his decision to step down have to be perpetuated by Obama being the one to suggest that he do so?

Because the Board of Bystanders is too indifferent/impotent/incompetent to do it themselves. Obama should've called for them to step down as well.

Wagoner should have been forced out when he went to the Board of Directors for a vote of confidence three years ago. It was obvious then that GM was in bad shape, the only thing that propped them up this long was 17 million unit/year industry volume, an amount unheard of prior to this decade. I don't like that it took the Obama administration to do the Boards job for them, but since the board wasn't doing their jobs either the appropriate action had to be taken. I've also read today that most of the board is on their way out too. Good.

I've been thinking about who should be Wagoner's longer term replacement. I've heard Mitt Romney's name bandied about, but I don't think he would even want any part of it, since if he fails he can forget about running for President again. The person I think might be a good candidate is Jerry York. He has experience with turnarounds with Chrysler in the '90s and IBM in about that same time period. He was on GM's board as Kirk Kerkorian's representative a few years ago until he started speaking up a little too much for Wagoner and the boards liking.

I had this big long thing written out and my net crashed. So I'll just say pretty much ditto to Otto and Nick.

With an added they drove the freaking bus so far in the ditch now and are running out the doors with million dollar parachutes that I'm not sure any of it salvageable at this point.

Because GM is begging Obama for money. When you want money from someone you kinda have to follow their conditions. If they don't like the conditions, then don't ask for the money.

Why not do the same with all of the other bailout-ees?

Good question. They should have.

If only they could turn back the clock. The Administration's handling of GM and Chrysler is a direct result of the public outrage over AIG's bonuses. You can rest assured that from here on out any further bailouts to anybody will come with strings attached.

Oh how I wish I could believe that.