General Motors

From FT.com May 13, 2013

In 2010, seven managers from PSA Peugeot Citroën and five from Chang’an Automobile met in Shenzhen, southern China, to lay the groundwork for a new car factory. Three years later, Capsa, a 50-50 joint venture between the French and Chinese companies, is in the final stages of preparing a 1m square metre plant for the September launch of Chinese-made premium cars under the DS brand. “Because we were beginning from a blank sheet, people wanted to make it as perfect as possible,” says Gilles Boussac, Capsa’s president, between meetings with his team of mostly Chinese managers. “So often in China, if you’re trying to rework or improve something, it takes years to achieve.” Read more

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Autos, China |

John Gapper Joel Ewanick strains General Motors’ affability

July 30, 2012 5:13 pm by John Gapper

When a senior executive gets the boot from a company, it is usually covered up with some pablum about seeking new opportunities. So General Motors’ statement about the abrupt departure of Joel Ewanick as its head of global marketing is remarkable.

The FT reported it in this way:

“The resignation is disappointing but he failed to meet the expectations that a company has of an employee,” Greg Martin, a GM spokesman, said in an interview. He declined to give further details.

 Read more

Tags: ,
Posted in Autos, Business |

John Gapper The looming problem for Madison Avenue

May 17, 2012 4:40 pm by John Gapper

The travails of old media businesses are well-known but I’m starting to feel sympathy for advertisers and media buyers.

That sentiment was brought on by looking (in old media fashion) at the front of the print section of the New York Times today. The lead article is about Madison Avenue’s scepticism on whether Facebook is a good advertising medium and underneath that is a piece on Dish Network’s new ad-skipping digital video recorder.

Facebook’s advertisers have been struggling with whether display ads on the social network will produce results, with General Motors pulling its $10m Facebook ad budget ahead of the intial public offering.

Meanwhile, Dish has upset US television networks in the “upfront” season where they show off their next season wares to advertisers but producing a box that automatically skips all the commercials between network shows. Read more

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Advertising |

Andrew Hill Lutz sheds no tears over Saab story

September 9, 2011 1:36 pm by Andrew Hill

It’s a cruel coincidence that the latest death knell for Saab comes within days of the latest extension of car guy Bob Lutz’s lease on life.

On Thursday, a Swedish court rejected the carmaker’s attempt to seek protection from its creditors, pushing a decision on potential insolvency into the hands of suppliers and employees awaiting payment for materials and labour. Saab is appealing, but the obituaries for the group – now selling well under 100,000 units annually – are already being written. Read more

Tags: , ,
Posted in Autos, Business, Management, Manufacturing |

Andrew Hill Electric cars: waiting for a new model

June 23, 2011 12:55 pm by Andrew Hill

The demise of Norwegian electric car pioneer Think Global will drain some of the energy from advocates of electric vehicles.

They should recharge by shifting their view from blueprints of cars and studying instead more comprehensive plans that aim to combine vehicle, infrastructure and services. Read more

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Autos, Business |

John Gapper What was good for GM was bankruptcy

November 17, 2010 10:06 pm by John Gapper

The General Motors initial public offering looks as if it will be successful – and will be priced well in excess of the range first set by the underwriters. That will let the US government sell down its 61 per cent stake substantially and perhaps exit entirely next year.

So who deserves the praise for this achievement? GM’s new management (even with the revolving door at the top), the government for its act of tough love in financing GM’s purge in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, or former GM executives led by Rick Wagoner?

My money is on the government and its auto industry taskforce led by Steve Rattner for not listening to Mr Wagoner’s dire warnings about Chapter 11 and for realising that GM could only be properly restructured in bankruptcy. Read more

Tags:
Posted in Autos |

John Gapper General Motors: good cars, terrible company

September 21, 2010 8:06 pm by John Gapper

Steve Rattner, the Obama administration’s former “car czar” who has a book out about the bailing out of General Motors and Chrysler, gives an interesting summary of his first impressions of Detroit to Peter Lattman in the New York Times.

So, for example, I found that the culture in Detroit, and at General Motors in particular, was even more bureaucratic and more stultified than what I would have guessed before I got there. The financial controls were far weaker than anything I would’ve imagined before I got there. On the positive side, GM had better projects than I would’ve imagined and it had also brought its manufacturing efficiency to a much higher level than I would’ve predicted.

That can be summarised as: GM was a terrible company making surprisingly good cars. Or: Detroit itself was in a bad way, whereas its manufacturing plants were healthy. Read more

Tags: ,
Posted in Autos |

John Gapper Boardroom battles at bailed-out US companies

July 15, 2010 8:18 pm by John Gapper

Companies controlled by the US government seem to have a lot of difficulty maintaining an amicable balance of power between their chairmen and their chief executives.

Harvey Golub’s abrupt resignation as chairman of American International Group after a stand-off between him and Bob Benmosche, AIG’s chief executive, is a second example of the phenomenon. Read more

Tags: ,
Posted in Business |