GM Advisor: Doubts Bankruptcy Is Chosen Route
By Michelle Krebs March 27, 2009Roger C. Altman, chairman and CEO of investment firm Evercore Partners and currently an
advisor to General Motors in its restructuring, says he doubts bankruptcy is the way struggling automakers like GM and Chrysler will go.
Altman was asked in an interview with the Financial Times, if we will see prepackaged bankruptcies for some carmakers. "The administration hasn't entirely made clear its position on that. So I'm not sure, but I would be skeptical that's the route this will go," he responded.
"I think the companies -- and let me focus particularly on General Motors, because that's the one I know best because we represent GM -- have made much more progress than people realized, in improving product quality, improving fuel-efficiency, streamlining themselves, lowering labor cost differentials dramatically relative to the transplant costs, and so forth," he added.
A go-to guy on the economy by companies, government and the like, Altman, 62, has spent his career in investment banking, including with Lehman Brothers and The Blackstone Group. He also did two stint with the U.S. Treasury Department. He formed Evercore as a boutique investment bank in 1996. The firm hand handled more than $600 billion of mergers, acquisitions and restructuring. It manages $2.6 billion of private equity, venture capital and public securities. He is a prominent Democratic fundraiser.
Asked by the Financial Times when the recession end, he responded: "It's going to be a distinctly subnormal recovery. That is mandated by the nature of the recession, which is quite different than almost all of the modern-era recessions we've seen. This is a balance-sheet-driven recession, a recession caused by the damage at the household level -- balance sheet damage -- and the damage at the financial sector level."
The Financial Times printed excerpts of its interview with Altman in Friday's edition and will post the entire videotaped interview this weekend.
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It's refreshing to read a report on GM that doesn't have that "they are doomed, let them die" view. I agree with Mr Altman that there is much more going on and much more progress GM has made than what the MSM has allowed us to know.
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