Rick Wagoner
Rick Wagoner
George Richard "Rick" Wagoner, Jr.is an American businessman and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors. Wagoner resigned as Chairman and CEO at General Motors on March 29, 2009, at the request of the White House. The latter part of Wagoner's tenure as CEO of General Motors found him under heavy criticism as the market valuation of GM went down by more than 90% and the company lost more than $82 billion USD. This led to his being...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth9 February 1953
CountryUnited States of America
Most of the model consolidation we've done is behind us. There will be some fine tuning.
Given the challenges we face in North America, it makes sense for me to assume control of GM North America's day-to-day operations and shorten the lines of communication and decision-making,
While this sounds like a large number, we recognize that it only goes part of the way we need to go to put GM North America in the fully competitive position that is necessary to maintain and enhance our future viability and growth.
We don't always agree on stuff, but when it's time to blow the whistle and start the game, we're not still debating.
We believe in fair exchange rates and Japan doesn't practice that. They have massive U.S. dollar reserves, and they use them to intervene regularly.
Ford, as I understand it, had done away with the concept of regional management, and now they've re-introduced that in Europe, so it's kind of a two-way street.
The big and the fast beat the small and the fast. If you check out the NBA today, they're big and fast.
The automotive market in North America remains very competitive, and our results reflect that, ... Improving market share and profitability remain an important priority.
A lot of other things come along with Chapter 11, which basically end up in a lot of pain.
All of our business units except GM North America are on or above track, and that has the extreme attention of us all. Progress is moving in the right direction ... but we still have more work to do.
There's been a consistency of approach and a consistency of execution. Moving to a common system and common metrics has really helped us.
This is a game that's going to play as long as you're playing it. It's never going to end. It'll go until I retire, and when the next person has the job, they'll be on it too.
I remember very clearly at the first budget review having a pretty direct conversation with the head of manufacturing... We began to get huge improvements in productivity and responsiveness. I got a chance to see that firsthand.
History shows you don't know what the future brings.