We liked Fritz. We felt that Fritz had more energy and more drive and got the message that things had to change and was being groomed to be CEO and deserved a chance… He’s shown that he can manage. Whether he can fundamentally change the culture of the company is another matter.
Bloomberg’s fresh sound bite from former car czarlet Steve Rattner. Well, considering you left him in charge, Steve, he’d damn well better change the culture of the company. Otherwise it reflects just as badly on the restructuring task force as it does on GM, doesn’t it? Come to think of it, picking Fritz because he had “more drive” than Rick Wagoner wasn’t really a good setup for fundamental culture change, was it? You don’t hire Larry to move your piano because he’s “higher energy” than Moe. But it’s not Rattner’s fault: GM’s inability to change its culture comes from its inability to hire the professionals. Which means Ken “the pay czar” Feinberg and his ridiculous pay limits are really to blame.
To jeopardize the return on that investment over whether, I don’t mean to sound cavalier, but over whether some CEO has a $500,000 base salary or a $750,000 base salary strikes me as very short-sighted
Oh, nice. So Rattner kept Fritz, trusting that he’d have bags of taxpayer bullion to pay an outsider replacement? That was really the plan? I don’t mean to sound cavalier, but leaving the guy who was in charge of what you called “the worst finance operation I’ve ever seen” at the top of GM wasn’t Ken Feinberg’s fault. If an unelected official is firing CEOs, the replacement shouldn’t be chosen based on relative merit to a guy who’d been running his company into the ground for nearly a decade.
Return to Greatness is, was, and will be.
He looks like “The Toyman” in the Superman cartoon from the 90’s.
Why not do it Silicon Valley style? Pay them $200,000 a year, plus if GM goes IPO you get x% of the company. With restrictions, of course. But make it a very results oriented compensation plan for the top few people.
There are problems with that, of course. But I think that’s the kind of medicine that could really turn GM around.
And of course I should add that Steve Rattner had no authority to fire Rick Wagoner.
You have a company with no money that is going through restructuring. You are providing 100% of the financing to the new company. It’s now yours. Because if you don’t provide money, the new company cannot even be formed. You decide to buy it.
So, the new company is not the old company, even if it has the same almost the same name. And it’s yours. All yours.
Don’t know about you, but I tend to think of my things as mine, not somebody else’s.
I can do whatever I please with my stuff. In my brand new company, I don’t have to have anyone at all from the old bankrupt one. In fact, if I feel like it, I can let them all go.
I can hire and put the Good Humor man in charge if I wish. It’s my company.
There may be social reasons that I may consider, so I might keep some of the old people. But I don’t have to.
In the case of new GM, the new owners were quite generous, and kept everyone except the old leader.
What is it about about this concept you fail to understand?
Once you buy the company, you can do anything you want with it. It’s yours.
Rattner fired Wagoner before the United States “bought” GM. At that time, GM was owned by someone else. GM’s board, representing its owners, did not fire Wagoner. In fact, they did not want Wagoner fired. Rattner did it anyway.
If you do not own a company, you have no right to fire its CEO. What is it about this concept you fail to understand?
They didn’t “fire” Wagoner, they made him stepping down a condition they wanted met before they were willing to finance GMs bankruptcy. Not the same thing, not uncommon, and not illegal.
As for the article, GM is better off finding fresh blood willing to work for the awful, terrible, poverty inducing, 500k salary cap, rather than hiring more of the overpaid smug “professional” managers that have destroyed most American manufacturing corporations over the last 20 years. That is not to say that Fritz was necessarily the right choice for CEO, only that I don’t believe the salary cap is in the top 20 problems preventing culture change at GM.
Rattner sees it differently. Did you see his article in Fortune? One of the sections: “Why I Fired GM’s CEO.”
GM’s board, representing its owners, did not fire Wagoner. In fact, they did not want Wagoner fired. Rattner did it anyway.
That was the price of free federal money. Nothing wrong with or illegal about that.
I’ve asked you to support your repeated contention that laws were violated, yet you’ve never done so. Just because you are persistent in making your inaccurate statements doesn’t mean that they’re true.
Right back at you. Just because you are persistent in making your inaccurate statements doesn’t mean that they’re true.
As I have said before, if Rattner wanted to fire Wagoner, he should have told him to tell his board that he had to go if GM wanted federal money. The GM board would then need to make a decision: Do we want federal money? Or do we want Wagoner?
That’s who should have made the decision. GM’s board. And as Rattner knew full well, GM’s board did not want Wagoner fired.
To call someone into your office and ask them to resign is firing them. Did Rattner have the right to fire Wagoner? If so, where did he get it?
I asked you to tell me what gave Rattner, or Obama, the right to fire the CEO of a public company. You told me to prove that he didn’t have the right. How can I prove a negative?
if Rattner wanted to fire Wagoner, he should have told him to tell his board that he had to go if GM wanted federal money. The GM board then would then need to make a decision: Do we want federal money?
Did you miss the hearings in Washington? Clearly, GM not only wanted money, it desperately needed money.
If the Board didn’t like it, they could have objected and turned down the cash. Clearly, they didn’t wish to choose Wagoner over another dose of federal greenbacks and immediate demand for repayment of the funds previously provided.
Had GM not received federal money, Wagoner and a whole lot of other people would be out of work right now, because GM would have been in liquidation. For Wagoner, the outcome was the same; the issue with with everyone else left standing.
Daanii2:
They did not “fire” him in the legal meaning of the word- he offered to step down, and they took him up on it. From a practical point of view he was being fired, but legally he stepped down by his own free will at the request of the incoming new boss. Not illegal or uncommon.
Don’t know why, but every time I see Rattner’s photo I am reminded of Alfred E. Neumann.
I think I know why: It’s because Rattner looks exactly like Alfred E.
There, happy to clear that up for ya…