Rick Wagoner
Rick Wagoner
George Richard "Rick" Wagoner, Jr.is an American businessman and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors. Wagoner resigned as Chairman and CEO at General Motors on March 29, 2009, at the request of the White House. The latter part of Wagoner's tenure as CEO of General Motors found him under heavy criticism as the market valuation of GM went down by more than 90% and the company lost more than $82 billion USD. This led to his being...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth9 February 1953
CountryUnited States of America
Rick Wagoner quotes about
It was a year in which two significant fundamental weaknesses in our North American operations were fully exposed - our huge legacy cost burden and our inability to adjust structural costs in line with revenue.
It's not an easy decision. We don't have many plants that aren't high quality and very productive.
You can buy another product; this is a free country. But if you do, you're paying more than you need to.
Whoever is ahead in this area can get a big advantage versus the other guys. Just being big isn't enough. We really want to pick up the pace in everything we do in the company.
That's because a couple products represent a larger percentage of the total at Chrysler than at GM. That can be an advantage and a curse, in terms of sales going up or down based on the results of a couple cars.
I think everybody's reeling a little bit about how fast things have moved south,
Our relationship is strong, and we look forward to our continued partnership. This transaction will allow us to preserve our business relationship, while further building up GM's already significant liquidity position during this critical phase of our turnaround.
Given the challenges we face in North America, it makes sense for me to assume control of GM North America's day-to-day operations and shorten the lines of communication and decision-making,
As we sit here today, it's our best guess and well thought out analysis, ... If we've learned anything in the last five years, it's that there's no guarantees in this business or any other business.
To make this happen, we need to bring down costs and build the necessary infrastructure -- and the best way to do that is by business and government working together.