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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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GM had some notable sales successes as we continued to expand in key growth markets around the world in 2005.
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Our financial performance continues to be quite disappointing,
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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.
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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.
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In his current assignment, Mike has led the team that has helped GM gain back market share in California. He's built strong relationships with dealers and employees in creating marketing initiatives, all of which should prove especially useful as we focus on additional key markets where we need to improve GM's performance.
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I'm like Sergeant Schultz, I know nothing. We are trying to share ideas around the world. We don't just come up with a great idea in Brazil and ignore it in the rest of the world.
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It's not an easy decision. We don't have many plants that aren't high quality and very productive.
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Everybody's got a piece of it. What we're trying to do is look at each piece and say, 'Where are we really uncompetitive versus the people we run against?'... If we're out of line, that's what we need to work on. So, it may not be exactly the same sacrifice everywhere, but I think just about everybody's got a piece of it.
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The big and the fast beat the small and the fast. If you check out the NBA today, they're big and fast.
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The automotive market in North America remains very competitive, and our results reflect that, ... Improving market share and profitability remain an important priority.