General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson resigns
General Motors chief executive Fritz Henderson is stepping aside from the leadership of the government-owned automaker.
The change comes just months after Henderson's predecessor, Rick Wagoner, was forced to resign by the Obama administration's autos task force.
Company chairman Edward E. "Ed" Whitacre, Jr., who was appointed earlier this year, will serve as interim chief executive as a search begins for a permanent replacement.
Whitacre and company officials described the decision for Henderson to resign as mutual. But Henderson, a company veteran, and the new company board had differed in recent months over whether to sell the company's Opel division and on other matters.
While sales of some of GM's new cars have been relatively strong in recent months, the company has been frustrated in its attempts to sell the Saturn and Saab brands.
"We all decided that some changes needed to be made going forward," Whitacre said. "We now need to accelerate our progress."
The GM board accepted the resignation at a meeting on Tuesday, but the U.S. government, which owns 61 percent of the company did not push for his ouster, according to company officials.
"The government was notified of the decision after it was taken," according to a GM spokesman. "This was a board-led decision. This was completely by the board."
In deciding to rescue the nation's largest automaker earlier this year, the Obama autos task force ousted Wagoner and half the board. It also invested another $30 billion in General Motors and in exchange got 61 percent of the company's stock.
The task force chose Henderson, one of Wagoner's deputies to replace him. But Henderson's appointment was taken with some trepidation because he is a longtime GM executive, officials said.
Former autos task force chief Steven Rattner insisted recently that the company still "needs a real housecleaning."