Why Fritz Henderson Is Out as GM's CEO

 

Wednesday, Dec. 02, 2009

By Alex Taylor III

It's Ed Whitacre's GM now.
By accepting the resignation of CEO Fritz Henderson, the board chairman, Ed Whitacre, puts himself squarely in the driver's seat at General Motors.
Auto-industry insiders like to think of their business as impossibly complicated, involving as it does billions of dollars, intricate technology and the necessity of gauging consumer tastes three or four years in the future. By their reasoning, developing the necessary expertise takes decades of experience. No outsiders need apply. (See GM's great hopes for 2010.)
Former Boeing executive Alan Mulally has partially disproved that theory by leading Ford to the greatest success among the Detroit Three. Now GM board chairman Ed Whitacre, a veteran of the telecommunications business, will try to go the rest of the way. After accepting the resignation of GM veteran Fritz Henderson, Whitacre will be running the company as interim CEO while he searches for a full-time successor. Read on here.....