New GM chairman: ‘I don’t know anything about cars’
Published: June 10, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
The new chairman of General Motors is already under fire.
Edward Whitacre, a former AT&T hotshot whose long corporate career has been touted as an example of his big-business prowess, delivered a rather startling comment to a Bloomberg reporter on Tuesday — saying he knows nothing about the auto industry.
“I don’t know anything about cars,” Whitacre said. “A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I’m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.”
He added that he thinks running the company — which recently became effectively a property of the US government — is a “public service.”
Credited for reviving the once troubled telecom AT&T, Whitacre brings a long tenure in corporate management to the struggling Detroit-based auto firm.
Bloomberg note: “Whitacre’s selection bucks more than a half-century of tradition at GM, where the only non-executives to lead the board since 1937 were interim Chairman Kent Kresa and John Smale, who held the job from 1992 through 1995. Whitacre will take the post when Detroit-based GM exits Chapter 11, perhaps by Aug. 31.”
“A bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and record in shaping a “monolithic” AT&T into a diversified enterprise make Whitacre “a good choice,” said Jim Hall, principal of 2953 Analytics auto-consulting firm in Birmingham, Michigan,” the wire service adds.
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A T &T, another company run into the ground by greedy management.
He’s perfect for the job!
A “Public Service”? Must the new GM snowjob.
We are doing a public service.
:))
Diversified AT&T?
Oh you mean like not being able to filter 3rd party phone service crammers from getting onto your bill with fake ass Voice Mail service? (yeah folks it’s STILL a problem today)
Did you mean diversified like the FIOS splitters with no oversight?
maybe the warrantless wiretapping?
Well being in telecommunications, maybe he can find the resonant frequency for cracking water into hydrogen on the fly, and make the engine block resistant to rust. If he could do that, I would give him props.
But I bet he won’t, as I doubt he understands electronics, or physics.
I doubt he gets GM into the black, but you can bet your ass he will get paid well whatever he does. Even if it’s making those ugly ass overpriced hybrids which still don’t get as good of gas mileage as an old model T running on lamp oil did!
” I don’t know anything about cars”
Then he’s PERFECT for the job!
Like all the other self absorbed, overpaid nobodies in similar positions, he can downsize, offshore and basically drive the company into the ground in exchange for the fast buck and a golden parachute.. all the while degrading service quality and destroying what remains of the companies public image.
Of course not! He was hired for his expertise at fucking working Americans and shipping their jobs overseas.
So, industrial engineer does TelCom? then does Cars? .. So, it WOULD seem that “anyone” can run a mega-corp, not just the “MBA specialists” we’re told are some kind of mystical gods.
All you need is a tad bit of sense (and given the “cops tazer, shoot tiny dog because they’re too stupid to call animal control or get a blanket” story, and a co-worker who believes “his life was in danger, that dog bit him 26 times!”, to wit I said “what kind of fucking moron keeps reaching into a biting mouth TWENTY SIX TIMES!?”) and a desire to get rich (at any expense) and you can do it, too. Slash bottom line! say that enough and the managers will do all the work while you collect your 10s of millions a year.
This country is a joke, the population is a joke, the leadership is a joke, the ruling elite are a joke.. just not the “oh my, that was funny!” kind.. more like the “if you died yesterday, the world would be a MUCH better place” kind.
This guy is the absolute epitome of corporate greed. It was on his watch that the illegal spying was allowed. ATT took advantage of fascist deregulation and returned the favors by allowing the illegal spying on all Americans. He outsourced thousands of jobs to the Phillipines and India. He is a union busting greedy prick. There go the jobs from GM.
Big deal, Alan Mulally came from Boeing Military to run Ford. They just know how to lick ass and steal, everything else is irrelevant.
“I don’t know anything about cars,” Whitacre said. “A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I’m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.”
Only a lazy, arrogant, incompetent executive pronounces that “a business is a business,” as if all businesses are the same and he has no intention of learning anything new. This is the attitude of a typical self-important MBA buffoon coming out of a diploma mill, not an intelligent businessman.
Bye bye, GM.
What’s new! The people running it before didn’t know anything either! See, that’s the joke on the American people. They’re lied to and they just keep sucking it in. Now let’s hear the Chant–USA, USA… No, you don’t have to be a Republican asshole to chant.
I am sorry but why is the Treasury and car czar picking out the new head of GM anyway? They said they did not want to get into the running of the company but they have picked him, who like most others knows nothing of the job he is supposed to do….they picked who stays and goes on the board, and I am sure we will all hear soon what cars they will be allowed to produce. They set the whole restructuring of Chrysler and then when the bondholders said they weren’t getting their fair share, they cry the blues that their whole plan might go up in smoke. Well, I am wondering why is there even a need for sending these companies into bankruptcy court? What will the court decided that the Obama administration already hasn’t? The one complaint re Chrysler was dismissed so could someone tell me why a bankruptcy court is even necessary if nothing is allowed to be challenged that has been decided by the car czar?
he’s supposed to run a company.. not design or engineer cars. having been a CEO of another major company means he can be a CEO of this major company.. neither position requires he know about the product, just that he can talk to his management and find out where there is still living flesh on the bone of the company, and hack it off..
skeletons are profitable, at least for the short term.. Sure, no one wants to see them clamoring around the streets, but.. this isn’t about healthy, it’s about profits! .. right?
Note to new GM president ,you couldnt do any worse than those so called experts than ran it into the ground. By the way if you think, after we gave you our harded earned money to bail you guys out ,that we will buy cars from china cutting our jobs. Think again, wont happen..Honda treats their employees right, is affordable and dependable and is MADE IN AMERICA..
Here they go again!
Yet another CEO who doesn’t know the business.
His main job will be to INCREASE HIS SALARY
by billions while screwing the company and
then to TAKE THE MONEY & RUN.
That’s what CEOs in America are all about.
I’m glad to see other readers noted the irony of this situation.
It takes a lot of hubris and hard work to run mega corporations into the ground. I guess he’s qualified. Doesn’t Obama know anyone that is capable and experienced?
Can you imagine a perspective employee showing up at a job interview and telling the personnel manager that they had no qualifications but “a job’s a job”.