DETROIT - General Motors Co.’s chief executive, Frederick “Fritz’’ Henderson, stepped down yesterday after the board determined the company is not changing quickly enough.
Chairman Ed Whitacre Jr. said he will serve as interim CEO. An international search for a new CEO and president is planned.
Whitacre thanked Henderson for his work but said it is time to accelerate the pace of rebuilding the largest US automaker.
Henderson, 51, had replaced former chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, who was ousted March 29 by the Obama administration’s auto task force.
Henderson has been with GM his entire career and was the government’s choice to run the beleaguered company after Wagoner left. Whitacre, picked by the government in June to be chairman of the new GM, is considered an outsider, having run AT&T Inc. for 17 years.
Whitacre and the board have become increasingly active in the company’s decisions, at times challenging some of Henderson’s. In November, the board voted to abandon plans to sell GM’s European Opel unit. That reversed an earlier option favored by Henderson to sell it to a consortium led by Canadian auto parts supplier Magna International Inc.
An Obama administration official said in a statement that “this decision was made by the Board of Directors alone. The Administration was not involved in the decision.’’
Henderson replaced Wagoner a few months before GM entered bankruptcy protection and led the company through a painful government-led reorganization.
With the government’s help, the company emerged from court protection in 40 days, cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans.
Henderson continued to downsize the automaker after its emergence from bankruptcy. He sought to scale down GM to four core brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC.
While he has largely succeeded in that goal, attempts to sell other brands have hit obstacles. This week, the Swedish luxury sports car maker Koenigsegg Group AB backed out of a deal to buy GM’s Saab brand. GM said yesterday that it has interested bidders but will phase out Saab if nothing materializes by year’s end.
GM also is winding down Pontiac and has a tentative sale of Hummer to a Chinese company. A bid to sell Saturn to race car mogul Roger Penske fell through; the brand is being liquidated.