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...future sale of the GM building in New York City for at least $500 million. He has kept costs low by consolidating and modernizing operations, laying off thousands of workers and winning wage concessions from hundreds of thousands of others. As a result of those measures and a better auto market, GM expects to show record profits of perhaps $3.8 billion for 1983, on sales of 4.1 million cars. Previous high for profits: $3.5 billion in 1978, the same year that GM set its record for car sales of 5.3 million...
Smith is surprising auto industry leaders even more by tinkering with the long-sacrosanct GM system. Says David Lewis, an aide in the president's office at GM from 1959 to 1966 and now a professor of business history at the University of Michigan: "He was all work and no play, but I underestimated the guy. He intends to make his mark on GM, and he will...
This last linkup boosted Smith's already high standing in Japan. "Many, many Japanese auto tycoons are trying to emulate Smith-san," says Nobuyoshi Yoshida, Japan's leading automotive journalist, who praises Smith for his flexibility, his keen accountant's eye and his pragmatic deal-making ability. Adds Yoshida: "Japanese businessmen would feel guilty doing business with such rivals as Nissan and Toyota at the same time...
Sure-handed in business dealings, Smith sometimes seems all thumbs when it comes to dealing with the public. He has antagonized shareholders by trying to limit their questions to management at annual meetings. He infuriated the United Auto Workers in 1982 when he became involved in pay negotiations. After Smith repeatedly complained that workers were overpaid and cost cutting was needed to regain a competitive position, GM announced a richer bonus plan for top executives on the very day that the union signed a contract accepting wage concessions. Admitted Smith afterward: "I'd rather it hadn't happened...
DIED. William J. Abernathy, 50, Harvard Business School professor and auto-industry expert who in 1980 co-wrote the influential book Managing Our Way to Economic Decline, which contended that the principal causes of America's industrial-production ills were poor corporate management and technological sluggishness; of cancer; in Boston...