Newsgroup: it.discussioni.auto
Titolo: l'agonia di Detroit

http://finanza.repubblica.it/News_Dettaglio.aspx?del=20090331&fonte=RPB&codnews=208152
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http://finanza.repubblica.it/News_Dettaglio.aspx?del=20090331&fonte=RPB&codnews=208152
Qualcosa di un po' più serio delle boiate a mucchi di Rebubblika:
Wagoner Had to Go
By PAUL INGRASSIA
What's good for General Motors really is good for America after all. And 
vice versa.
That's the best way to read the sad but necessary -- in fact, long 
overdue -- departure of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner Sunday, at the 
behest of President Barack Obama's Automotive Task Force. Give the Obama 
team credit, too, for replacing most of GM's pet-rock board of directors, 
which put loyalty to Mr. Wagoner above duty to shareholders while the 
company imploded.
These steps add serious credibility to the task force's effort to force 
fundamental changes at GM and Chrysler, the two car companies getting 
federal aid. Chrysler was given 30 days to form an alliance with another car 
company, most likely Fiat. The task force concluded, correctly, that 
Chrysler can't survive as an independent company. GM has 60 days to offer a 
realistic survival plan with new concessions from bondholders and the United 
Auto Workers union.
Sound familiar? That's basically what the Bush administration told GM last 
December, before the Bushies bypassed Congress and doled out the first $13 
billion. By extending the deadline yesterday, the task force risked coming 
across like a hapless parent saying to the misbehaving children, "Kids, this 
time I really mean it." But dumping the board and Mr. Wagoner -- just two 
weeks after the executive insisted his job was secure -- changes the game, 
as does the president's blunt talk yesterday. Mr. Obama raised the 
possibility of "using our bankruptcy code to help them restructure and 
emerge stronger."
I'll have to confess initial skepticism about the president's Automotive 
Task Force, but so far I'm impressed. Business executives are supposed to be 
hard-nosed realists, but we heard more realism from Mr. Obama yesterday than 
we've heard from Detroit in years.
Speaking of unreality, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said that Mr. Wagoner 
is a "sacrificial lamb," but that's only if you don't look at his record. 
Since Mr. Wagoner became CEO in June 2000, GM's stock price has declined 
from more than $70 a share to under $3. The past year has been brutal on all 
stocks, but even in 2005, when car sales stood at near-record levels, the 
company lost $10.6 billion and the stock had plunged nearly 75% from when 
Mr. Wagoner took the helm. GM also suffered a steady slide in its U.S. 
market share -- from 28% to 22% -- during the Wagoner era.
In 2001, Mr. Wagoner negotiated a European alliance with Fiat (yep, the same 
company now talking to Chrysler) on terms that could have forced GM to buy 
the Italian auto maker when Fiat was hemorrhaging money. GM had to pay $2 
billion to buy its way out of that dilemma. Then Mr. Wagoner belatedly 
placed big bets on full-sized SUVs and pickup trucks just as gas prices 
started to soar and gas-electric hybrids got popular. GM's answer is the 
Chevy Volt, a more-advanced hybrid that's still two years from launch and 
will cost around $35,000 when it does appear.
The sad irony here is that Mr. Wagoner's path to prominence at GM began the 
last time a General Motors CEO was ousted -- though that time by the 
company's board instead of by the president of the United States. After the 
departure of Robert Stempel in November 1992, Mr. Wagoner was named GM's 
chief financial officer at age 39. He was the youngest member of a new 
executive team installed to fix the ailing company.
As GM recovered in the 1990s thanks to some good management decisions and a 
good economy, Mr. Wagoner continued his advance. He ran the company's North 
American operations and then became president and chief operating officer 
before becoming CEO at age 48. But along the way, a couple of crises seemed 
to dim Mr. Wagoner's ardor for reform.
One occurred in 1998, when GM took on the UAW at a metal-stamping plant in 
Flint, Mich., where workers had negotiated production quotas that they could 
fill with just five hours of work, though they were getting paid for a full 
eight hours. When GM responded by moving some of the metal-stamping 
machinery elsewhere, workers went on strike, shutting down dozens of other 
GM factories that depended on the parts made in Flint. When the strike ended 
54 days later GM had lost $2.2 billion, as well as any determination to 
insist on work-rules changes from the union.
Then in December 2000, Mr. Wagoner's first major move as CEO was to announce 
the closing of Oldsmobile, which had shrunk to a fraction of its former 
sales. But the up-front announcement -- as opposed to a quiet buyout 
effort -- enabled dealers to demand top dollar for closing their franchise. 
It took GM nearly four years, myriad lawsuits and more than $1 billion to 
shut Oldsmobile down.
After those two episodes, say former General Motors executives, any 
discussion of further culling GM's lineup of eight different brands or of 
demanding major improvements in factory productivity became strictly 
off-limits with Mr. Wagoner. There was a "can't do" mentality that accepted 
too many brands, too many dealers and too many workers as immutable facts of 
life that could only be changed slowly and gingerly, if ever. That might 
have worked had Americans continued buying big pickups and SUVs at a 
record-setting pace for another decade or two. But that prospect never was 
realistic, even before car sales collapsed nine months ago. Mr. Wagoner 
stuck with overly rosy forecasts until the very end.
The good news for him is that he's now free to work for more than $1 a 
year -- the salary he reluctantly accepted as a condition of GM's first 
dollop of government dollars. Meanwhile, the two key questions for General 
Motors are who should lead the company and whether it really can 
successfully restructure without filing for bankruptcy.
On the first question, I'd vote for an outsider. Fritz Henderson, the 
company's president and GM lifer who's replacing Mr. Wagoner, might be very 
capable, but the plain fact is that GM is far too inbred. Over the years the 
company has launched successful innovations ranging from a joint-venture 
plant with Toyota in California to the Saturn subsidiary to modular 
auto-assembly techniques in Brazil, but has failed to capitalize on any of 
them.
Larry Kellner of Continental Airlines is one outside candidate worth 
considering. I've never met him, but he runs a terrific airline whose 
unionized employees really understand customer service. Lewis Campbell of 
Textron is another. He is (full disclosure) a personal friend. But he spent 
his formative years at GM, and thus knows something about the auto industry, 
before leaving nearly two decades ago.
As for bankruptcy, President Obama and task force chief Steve Rattner 
clearly would rather avoid that, for both GM and Chrysler. Politically, it's 
a savvy move for them to give the companies one more chance to avoid 
bankruptcy. The president's words yesterday will make it hard for him to 
back down.
GM now needs concessions from the bondholders (who have $27 billion in 
unsecured debt) and the UAW. Basically, both parties will have to take GM 
stock in lieu of much of the cash they're owed. In the end, however, it's 
more likely that the union and the bondholders will find it easier to accept 
changes that are forced on them instead of suggested to them. That probably 
will mean bankruptcy, or something like it, before this saga ends.
Mr. Ingrassia is a former Dow Jones executive and Detroit bureau chief for 
this newspaper. "Crash Course," his book on the auto industry's current 
crisis, will be published by Random House next January.
M. 

Qualcosa di un po' più serio delle boiate a mucchi di Rebubblika:
Dice praticamente le stesse cose.....
-- 
Stefano D.(PD) 
Bmw Z4 3.0/ Bmw 330cd+  / Mini Cooper Cabrio talvolta
Webmaster of 
www.terryleehale.com
 / 
http://www.joemoon.it
C'e' gente che sa tutto, ed e' tutto quello che sa.

 Dice praticamente le stesse cose.....
Direi proprio di no. Spiega come sono avvenute le cose, non fa congetture 
sui massimi sistemi.
Soprattutto non spara cazzate stile "minkia minkia č tutto kolpa del 
kapitalismo selvaggio".
M. 

sui massimi sistemi.
Mah. Io ci leggo gli stessi concetti di fondo.
