{"id":49637,"date":"2012-05-03T11:50:54","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T15:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=49637"},"modified":"2012-05-03T11:55:54","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T15:55:54","slug":"gm-planning-another-restructuring-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2012\/05\/gm-planning-another-restructuring-in-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"GM Planning Another Restructuring in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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GM CEO Dan Akerson testifying before Congress earlier this year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fresh on the heels of another big loss on the other side of the Atlantic, General Motors Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson confides that another big shake-up is coming in Europe.<\/p>\n

The executive, interviewed on public radio\u2019s The Takeaway, didn\u2019t detail specifics of the plan but it would be the latest in a series of efforts to staunch the hemorrhaging losses at GM Europe.\u00a0 Once forecast to be back in the black this year, GM Europe lost $256 million for the January to March quarter, a heavy setback at a time when other key units, including North America, are improving their profitability.<\/p>\n

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News You Can Use!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a 4-alarm fire,\u201d Akerson told Takeaway co-host Celeste Headlee, adding that GM\u2019s top management is \u201cdoing everything we can to get it back in the black.\u201d\u00a0 That means, Akerson said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to restructure again.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been barely six months since GM Europe underwent a previous shake-up, top managers including President Nick Reilly being transferred or forced into retirement.\u00a0 He was replaced by German engineer Karl-Friedrich Stracke, while marketing guru Susan Docherty and GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky were also assigned to bring order out of the European chaos.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, GM announced earlier this year plans to link up with France’s troubled PSA Peugeot Citroen, an alliance in which they will share purchasing, powertrain components and the development of some future products.\u00a0 The makers hope to each save billions of dollars in the coming years, though the payoff is likely to build slowly.<\/p>\n

But the latest red ink suggests the situation is proving more difficult to control than GM had hoped.<\/p>\n

(For more on Europe’s losses and GM’s overall Q1 performance, <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The situation is complicated by the debt crisis plaguing the Continent and threatening to shatter the so-called Euro Zone.\u00a0 There\u2019s a new economic problem seemingly \u201cevery day,\u201d Akerson lamented, whether in Greece, Portugal, Italy or Spain.\u00a0 Even Europe\u2019s most powerful economies are feeling the drag as overall car sales slip into another deep recession.<\/p>\n

A former Navy officer who spent most of his life in the telecomm industry, Akerson isn\u2019t someone who spends a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror.\u00a0 He only has time, he insisted, \u201cfor looking at what\u2019s ahead of me.\u201d\u00a0 But when asked whether the GM board made a mistake rejecting the planned sale of a majority stake in the German-based Opel subsidiary, Akerson paused and sighed \u2013 then tried to turn the subject to the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpel maybe having a hard year,\u201d he suggested, \u201cbut maybe in five years it will be making lots of money and North America will be in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his interview, Akerson also was asked about the continuing backlash surrounding the maker\u2019s 2009 bankruptcy bailout \u2013 whether it has gotten swept up in the politics of a presidential election year and whether that is hurting the largest of the domestic automakers.<\/p>\n

While admitting \u201cIt\u2019s controversial,\u201d the CEO said he believes \u201cmost people have gotten past it.\u201d\u00a0 But it continues to come up in this election year, he agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t remember things being quite as divisive as they were now,\u201d Akerson conceded. \u201cAgain, I’m not a politician. I’m not that quick, smart, on an interview like this. But I will say, I know it worked. I know jobs were saved. And I’ll tell you what. Go back to the arsenal of democracy? Great countries do two things really well. They make things. They manufacture and create value.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we’ve got a 2nd chance,\u201d he concluded. \u201cWe don’t deserve a 3rd. We’ve got to get it right this time or we don’t get it in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barely 6 months after ousting most of its senior management in Europe, GM is planning another restructuring there, CEO Dan Akerson reveals, calling the situation in Europe a “4-alarm fire.” That news follows word that European losses hammered GM’s balance sheet during the first quarter, reports TheDetroitBureau.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49637"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=49637"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=49637"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=49637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}