Word: auto
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...list presented to GM by the President's auto task force is stark and steep: shrink labor costs, including retiree health-care expenses; slash debt; kill or sell low-performing brands; and reduce the number of models for sale and the number of dealers selling them. Should GM, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the company's bondholders fail to figure out how to execute those tasks by June 1, the government will usher GM into bankruptcy, which could lead to its breakup into "good" and "bad" subsidiaries. The bad would be sold for parts...
...that sense, GM is getting off easy: Obama's task force gave Chrysler just 30 days to seal its proposed partnership with Italy's Fiat Group - or else join the likes of American Motors, Packard and Studebaker in the auto graveyard. If Chrysler gets the deal done, the government will lend it $6 billion to sustain its operations. But Chrysler's owner, Cerberus Capital Management, will leave with zero of its $7.4 billion original investment. (See the 12 most important cars of all time...
...landscape of the U.S. auto industry, in other words, is about to be radically reshaped. So what will its future look like? It's difficult to imagine today, with consumers hunkering down, car loans drying up and the Detroit Three struggling to survive, but the global car business may be on the verge of a big upswing in demand. Companies that can meet consumers' needs for fuel-efficient yet stylish cars - and that have flexible manufacturing plants to turn out the hot products on demand - are likely to find huge opportunities for growth once the economy recovers. That's partly...
...been losing market share at a rate of 0.7% per year for the past 30 years - and GM was planning to drop brands and nameplates. The task force had no reason to think that GM could gain share, and its sales rate proved that point. Industry-wide, March auto sales were down 40% on a seasonally adjusted basis. GM's factory-utilization rate is less than 60%. That's abysmal - the rate needs to be in the 80s for the company to be successful - and it's one reason GM is hemorrhaging cash. "We don't believe the rest...
...White House's auto-task-force working group is headed by Steve Rattner, a former reporter who was head of the private-equity firm Quadrangle Group, and Ron Bloom, an investment banker who previously worked for the United Steelworkers union. Staffed by about 15 restructuring and other experts, the task force aims to do two things in the weeks ahead. First, it will try to close the deal on Chrysler's sale to Fiat. Sources familiar with the task force's approach describe Chrysler as "hollowed out" by a succession of owners and largely worthless, with no quality brands other...