W.O.T.

Former Task Force Chief Rattner Slams Wagoner
BUSINESSWEEK.com
The Auto Beat
Posted by: David Welch on October 22

Former Treasury Department auto task force chief Steve Rattner took off the gloves in his assessment of fired General Motors Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner.

… Rattner said in his own narrative of the auto bailout that he and his team found at GM “perhaps the weakest finance operation any of us had ever seen in a major company.” That should be the last thing they discovered at GM given that Wagoner and many of his very top reports came from GM’s New York treasury office or were, at the least, finance guys by training.

… He wrote: “Certainly Rick and his team seemed to believe that virtually all of their problems could be laid at the feet of some combination of the financial crisis, oil prices, the yen-dollar exchange rate, and the UAW.” Wagoner made that case repeatedly and many in the organization took it to heart. GM had excuses for not succeeding and they came right down from the top. Rattner also wrote that he found a tone of “friendly arrogance” from Wagoner. That was what did Wagoner in. He opposed the idea of bankruptcy, which the task force and its advisors thought was an option that needed to be seriously considered. And if Wagoner thought GM’s problems were inherited, and the union, oil prices and the yen were to blame, then he surely wasn’t the CEO to bring in real change.

The truth is that the UAW did not hesitate to come to the party with concessions and total co-operation. The Wall Street bond holders were the bad guys, and refused to make any concessions at all until threatened by Washington, and specifically called out by President Obama.