Ed Whitacre at speaks at Traverse City
General Motors CEO and Chairman Edward Whitacre will do all he can to shed the “Government Motors” moniker that has stuck with the company ever since it came out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. How does Whitacre plan on doing that? Well first on his long list of ‘To Do’s’ is the long awaited initial public offering.
“We don’t like this label of ‘Government Motors,” Whitacre said during his speech at the Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Michigan. “It turns off customers. It turns us off. People at GM are embarrassed by that. We’re moving as fast as we can. It’s No. 1 on our list.”
Whitacre said that GM expects to sell its stock in one batch. Many analysts had expected GM to sell only a partial stake at first, followed by several smaller sales, but Whitacre told reporters Thursday, “Our anticipation is we’d roll it out there all at once.”
He said that the IPO will be large enough to allow the government to sell enough of its 60.1 percent stake in the company.
“We want the government out. Period,” Whitacre said. “We don’t want to be known as Government Motors.”
– By: Omar Rana
Source: AutoObserver