Word: rattner
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...focused on just four brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC. The Federal Government, which has committed $50 billion to the company, took a majority stake and installed a new chairman. The restructurings of GM and Chrysler were considered coups for President Obama's auto task force, whose head, Steven Rattner, said he will step down...
...Rattner, an icy-eyed, sharp-spoken Wall Street dealmaker, laid out Obama's unappealing options. Chrysler could be scrapped for parts through an unstructured bankruptcy. Or the task force could try to make the Fiat proposal work, using the leverage of bankruptcy to force concessions and the Treasury's wallet to refinance the debt and recapitalize operations as debtor in possession. Some task-force members argued that, painful as it would be, liquidating Chrysler would strengthen the survivors - GM and Ford...
...March 26, Obama convened the task force in the Roosevelt Room. By then, as Rattner explained to the President, a commercially sound plan for a stand-alone Chrysler was out of the question; it was deeply in debt, bleeding money and saddled with unpopular products. Of the 20 best-selling vehicles in the U.S. in 2008, only one, the Dodge Ram pickup, was made by Chrysler - compared with five for GM and four for Ford. A venerable European carmaker, Daimler, had already tried and failed to revive Chrysler. Its current owner, the private-equity fund Cerberus, had spent months...
...Bloom argued Fiat's case, Chrysler's case and ultimately the UAW's case. Gangly and soft-spoken, Rattner's co-chairman is passionately pro-union - an unusual trait among investment bankers. He helped guide the steelworkers' union through the collapse and restructuring of its industry, and this time he came to the aid of Chrysler's workforce. Gene Sperling, a veteran of the Clinton Administration, added his weight to Bloom's, speaking movingly of the human devastation that would follow should Chrysler collapse at such a weak moment for the overall economy...
...Obama asked Rattner to rate the chance that a Fiat deal could be struck, given all the competing interests and Chrysler's extremity. "Fifty-one percent," Rattner answered. "And in my experience, deals get worse, they don't get better" as they take concrete form. On that note, Obama decided to press ahead, sparing Chrysler from the merciless marketplace...