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
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.
GM had some notable sales successes as we continued to expand in key growth markets around the world in 2005.
Overall economic growth in Europe hasn't been robust and the car market hasn't been robust,
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.
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.
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.
You've got to have a consistent, gradual growth strategy, and I think some basics are going to be required,
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're not interested in a bailout, but we would like a chance to play on a level playing field.
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.
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.
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.
What I've seen around the world is if the regulatory desires are combined with things that affect consumer behavior - such as in Europe, they tax gasoline very heavily - you do get people to move to very fuel efficient cars; trade off bigger vs. smaller cars.