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
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.
If you look from 1992 to 1997, we've really reduced the number of car models from more than 100 to about 81. Our strategy is to have the right number of products. Segment the brands better. There's a lot of work being done on the distribution side of the business. And the data's showing that our new products are doing a very decent job in the market.
I was willing to go just about anywhere in the U.S. for the best job - except New York City. Of course, I received a job offer from GM - in New York City.
I don't think having me do both the jobs, the corporate job and the North American job, is the right long-term answer. But I think while we're in the midst of the turnaround, the value of the shortened lines of communication speaks for itself. And so we're going to stick with it for a while longer.
If I look at our priority list on the things we need to do to get cost-competitive, wage rates are nowhere near the top for us. We have a far greater burden in legacy costs, in flexibility of using our work force, in jobs banks than we do in wage rates.
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.
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.
It's not an easy decision. We don't have many plants that aren't high quality and very productive.
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.
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.
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.
This is a very big step forward that we will build on, ... the single biggest cost reduction that we've probably been able to announce in a single day in the history of G.M.
I'm not sure I'm going to make a lot of progress by scorekeeping everybody's sacrifice.