More GM Gyrations: Lutz To Be Reassigned, Reports Say
December 04, 2009
General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz is being reassigned to a new role and some younger execs will be moved up in the continuing shake-up of the management ranks, being 
outlined later Friday morning.
Chairman Ed Whitacre, who replaced ousted Fritz Henderson as interim CEO, is building a team until a replacement CEO can be found, Bloomberg News reports.
Younger managers are being given "more prominent" positions, thus triggering the reassignment of 77-year-old Lutz to a product adviser role, the Wall Street Journal reports. Board member and auto analyst Stephen Girsky becomes an adviser; Mark Reuss, recently appointed vice president of global engineering, gets an expanded role, Bloomberg reports.
The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reports that Whitacre drew up the new management blueprint in a matter of four hours. He announced the departure of Henderson on Tuesday. Whitacre's plan will have no major firings immediately, reports say.
An employee announcement on the moves is set for Friday morning with a public statement to follow.
Lutz: "Product Conscience"
The high-profile Lutz, who filled in this week for Henderson as keynote speaker at the Los Angeles auto show, has been GM's product chief for most of the decade. In summer, he was put in charge of marketing. He had announced plans to retire at the start of the year but changed those plans, sources told AutoObserver.com, at the insistence of President Obama's automotive task force.
Lutz will remain part of the team but in a role that returns him more closely involved with designing and development new models, and less with marketing. He will be "more like the conscience for the product in the company," Bloomberg reported
Younger Execs To Lead the Charge
Younger and stronger leaders will take on more prominent roles, according to reports.
Girsky is president of New York-based consultantcy S.J. Girsky & Co. He was put on the board at the urging of the task force to represent the United Auto Workers union. He is a former Morgan Stanley analyst. He's been an adviser to the union as well as GM CEOs Henderson and Rick Wagoner.
Reuss, 45, is not only a GM lifer but his father, Lloyd, was GM president, ousted along with then CEO Robert Stempel in a boardroom coup in the early 1990s. Reuss was brought back from heading GM's Australian subisiary, Holden, early to take over global engineering.
Reuss recently held a media briefing at which he outlined his plans for global product development and improving quality. He revealed then that Whitacre personally had directed him and his staff to call every customer who returned or exchanged a vehicle under GM's 60-day money-back guarantee program to ask them why.
Whitacre's plan also combines sales and marketing, a move that reverses Henderson's strategy put in place only a few months ago, reports say. -- Michelle Krebs, Senior Analyst and Editor at Large
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