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General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson said during a live web chat yesterday that more changes to the company’s executive leadership are coming this year. GM has already lost several high-profile leaders this year, including product head Bob Lutz, Cadillac chief Mark McNabb and purchasing vice president Bo Andersson.
“GM will be making changes both in the structure and processes to run the business, which includes, for example, reducing executive manpower by 34 percent from year-end 2008 through 2009,” Henderson said. “Yes, there will be significant change.”
Lutz transferred to a senior advisor position in April and will retire at the end of 2009. McNabb defected from Cadillac in May to become the CEO of Maserati, and Andersson left GM to become chairman of Russian automaker GAZ.
Although the losses of such high-profile workers as Lutz and Andersson are disappointing, Henderson’s statements about change in the structure and processes of running GM are overdue. Outsiders and former employees have blasted GM’s corporate culture as being bloated, slow, and ineffective, stifling the creativity of the automaker’s designers and engineers.
The comments may also be foreshadowing for Henderson, whose job as the CEO may not continue once the automaker emerges from bankruptcy. Speculation that President Obama’s auto task force will replace Henderson with a GM outsider has run rampant since the former CFO took over for ex-GM chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner earlier this year.
GM will cut about 20 percent of its salaried workers in the U.S. by the end of 2009. When the cuts are completed, GM expects to have about 23,500 salaried U.S. workers, down from 29,000 at the end of 2008.
Source: Automotive News
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