GM names Barra as CEO, succeeding Akerson

General Motors has named product development chief Mary Barra to succeed Dan Akerson as CEO, making her the first female CEO of a global automaker. 

Dan Ammann, 41, executive vice president and CFO, was named president and will assume responsibility for managing the company’s regional operations around the world, GM said today. The global Chevrolet and Cadillac brand organizations and GM Financial will also report to Ammann.

Akerson, 65, said he pulled ahead his succession plan by several months after his wife was diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer about two months ago. His retirement -- and several other top executive moves -- will be effective Jan. 15, GM said.

"It was not my intention for my days at General Motors to end this way," he told reporters during a conference call. "But I think, when you think about life’s priorities, my family and my wife rank No. 1."

Akerson said his original time table for stepping down was sometime in the second half of 2014. He said the board already had extensively vetted the internal candidates, but chose not to conduct an outside search.

Mark Reuss, 50, executive vice president and president, North America, will replace Barra, 51, as executive vice president of global product development, purchasing and supply chain. The board also named director Theodore (Tim) Solso to succeed Akerson as chairman.  Solso, 66, is the former chairman and CEO of Cummins, Inc., and has been a member of the GM board since June 2012.

Alan Batey, 50, now head of global Chevrolet and U.S. sales, will replace Reuss as executive vice president of GM North America.

Vice Chairman Steve Girsky, 51, head of corporate strategy and business development, will move to an advisory role before leaving the company in April, GM said. He will remain on the company's board of directors.

GM said it will name a new CFO to replace Ammann at a later date.

'They're fine with it'

Akerson said each executive who was broadly viewed as in the running for the CEO job -- Reuss, Ammann and Girsky -- has embraced the changes.

"I walked every one of the executives through their new assignments and, uniformally, they said, 'Man, this is the best choice,'" he said. "They’re fine with it."

Barra, who also will be joining the GM board, started her career on a factory floor as an intern more than 30 years ago. She has been in charge of product development and quality of all GM cars and trucks for 22 months, fostering collaboration and wringing costs out of the supply chain.

The daughter of a Pontiac die maker takes the helm after the U.S. government sold its stake in GM, giving her full freedom to take on domestic and Japanese manufacturers whose price competition threatens profit.

Akerson called Barra "eminently qualified," personable and held in high regard throughout the company.

"She grew up in the company, worked on the factory floor, managed plants, and then managed the largest, most complex segment of our business, global product development," he said. While overseeing GM’s product development over the last three years, Barra "brought order and started to fundamentally transform" the process, Akerson said.

Bob Lutz, who served as GM’s product chief from 2001 to 2009, told Automotive News that Barra gets credit for leading the globalization of GM’s manufacturing footprint while she was head of global manufacturing-engineering during much of that time.

"She was the key implementer of the global manufacturing strategy," said Lutz, who called Barra smooth and poised.

"That was a major achievement and saved a lot of money."

Top women

As the first female CEO of a global automaker, Barra joins Ginni Rometty at IBM Corp., Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo Inc., Marissa Mayer at Yahoo! Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co.’s Meg Whitman and Ursula Burns of Xerox Corp. as women who have risen to run major U.S. corporations.

Barra began with GM in 1980 as a student at General Motors Institute (since renamed Kettering University) in Flint, Mich., and landed her first job as a plant engineer at Pontiac Motor Division, where her father worked for 39 years. There were few women and even fewer 18-year-olds.

“It was a rougher environment,” she said in an interview with Bloomberg in March. “It makes you harder.”

Her big break came when GM put her in a program for high-potential workers and gave her a scholarship to get an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She became an executive assistant for then-CEO Jack Smith, a perch that gave her a window into how the company worked. She recalls visiting senior leaders at GM to talk about diversity and women’s issues while she was pregnant.

“I will leave with great satisfaction in what we have accomplished, great optimism over what is ahead and great pride that we are restoring General Motors as America’s standard bearer in the global auto industry,” Akerson said in a message to employees.