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
These results reinforce the need to step up our efforts to eliminate waste and lower costs, ... The industry continues to venture into new territory -- near-record demand mixed with unprecedented price pressures and intensely strong competition on all fronts.
Don has played a pivotal role in strengthening GM's global manufacturing competitiveness, ... His contributions provide an important foundation for our future as we continue to bring these world-class manufacturing processes to new plants and existing facilities around the world.
That's silly. Fritz took the CFO job because I asked him to, and the board approved. It was a logical progression in his career and I hope Fritz continues to develop and grow. One of my most important jobs as chairman of GM is to identify and grow talent.
This is a difficult but necessary decision, and it was made only after the greatest deliberation. A number of other U.S. companies have already taken similar action in the face of these rising costs and increasing global competition. In particular, U.S. health-care costs continue to rise at high rates. When these benefits were conceived decades ago, no one could have foreseen the explosive cost inflation that we have been experiencing in recent years. These costs are simply not sustainable.
I think it's going to be silly not to take the competitive threat seriously. If we haven't learned any lessons from Japan and Korea, we deserve the things that befall us, ... On the flip side, the growth in China continues to be so strong that our guess is that most of the capacity in China will be used to meet Chinese needs.
Our financial performance continues to be quite disappointing,
Our relationship is strong, and we look forward to our continued partnership. This transaction will allow us to preserve our business relationship, while further building up GM's already significant liquidity position during this critical phase of our turnaround.
GM had some notable sales successes as we continued to expand in key growth markets around the world in 2005.
I've taken a significant pay cut this year, ... I think I'll have a 50 percent pay cut.
These bold initiatives are designed to immediately improve our competitiveness and position GM for long-term success and today's transition is a further step in that direction.
These negotiations were done in a positive, cooperative, problem-solving spirit, ... While it may have taken some time to reach this cooperative solution, I think it was time well-spent.
These markets are going to grow. They're going to have their ups and downs, just like the American market. But Asia will be the fastest growing area of the world.
These actions are necessary for GM to get its costs in line with our major global competitors,
These actions are necessary for G.M. to get its costs in line with our major global competitors.