G.M. Says It Hopes to Repay U.S. by End of 2010

G.M. Says It Hopes to Repay U.S. by End of 2010
By NICK BUNKLEY
Published: December 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/business/09auto.html?hpw


DETROIT — The new president of North American operations at General Motors said Tuesday that the automaker hoped to repay its federal loans and become a public company again by the end of next year.

The executive, Mark Reuss, who was elevated to run G.M.’s most troubled region as part of a management shuffle last week, said one goal was “to make this country proud of this company again” after this year’s bankruptcy and government bailout.

“We need to repay the money that we borrowed, and I think everybody in this company wants that desperately,” Mr. Reuss said on a conference call with reporters that marked his first public comments since assuming his new role. “We want to make people in this country proud of General Motors, its employees and its dealers.”

Mr. Reuss did not specify when G.M. expected to be profitable — “as soon as possible,” he responded when asked — but he said the company, buoyed by several popular new models, was quickly making progress.

“We can be great here very quickly with the products that we’ve developed and put into the marketplace,” he said.

Susan E. Docherty, who last week became G.M.’s vice president for sales and marketing, said on the same call that G.M. would make sure not to fall back on old habits that could derail its recovery. Though G.M. offered some of the industry’s highest discounts in October and November, Ms. Docherty said the company would not be relying on such incentives in the future even as it aimed to regain lost market share.

“In the old G.M. we had a tendency to buy our market share,” Ms. Docherty said. “We’re going to earn our market share, and that’s where the big difference is.”

Edward E. Whitacre Jr., G.M.’s chairman who also became its chief executive last week, planned to take questions from reporters Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Whitacre succeeded Fritz Henderson, who was ousted by G.M.’s board after running the company for eight months.

Mr. Reuss and Ms. Docherty declined to reveal specific goals that Mr. Whitacre, a former chief executive at the telecommunications company AT&T, had laid out for them or the company but said he was pushing for results.

“Even though he doesn’t consider himself an auto expert, he asks great questions,” Ms. Docherty said. “He’s not telling me how to solve the problem but he’s pretty clear with me that he expects me to solve it.”

Mr. Reuss, the son of a former G.M. president, said G.M. still planned to make a $1 billion payment this month toward the $6.7 billion it owed the federal government. G.M. borrowed $50 billion in the last year, but most of that debt has been converted into an ownership stake held by the Treasury Department.

Though Mr. Whitacre has previously suggested that G.M. may not be ready for a public offering until at least 2011, Mr. Reuss said going public and repaying the government are “at the very top of our desires of what this company will look like next year.”

Mr. Reuss said there were no plans to cut more factory jobs, even though the company still had more hourly workers than its recovery plan called for at the end of the year.