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 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.
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.
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.
Overall economic growth in Europe hasn't been robust and the car market hasn't been robust,
GM had some notable sales successes as we continued to expand in key growth markets around the world in 2005.
There was an almost an 80% decline one year from 640,000 vehicles to 200,000, and now it's grown back. Our share has grown a lot.
If you look at our production schedule, we think we ought to be able to grow our sales. We feel good about our product, but there's no reason to put a target out there when nobody else does, and we get beat up on it.
You've got to have a consistent, gradual growth strategy, and I think some basics are going to be required,
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 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.
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 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.