Whitacre Says GM Eager for IPO to Shed `Government Motors' Tag
By Mark Clothier - Bloomberg
bloomberg.com
General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre said while an initial public offering filing isn’t likely in the next few weeks, he is eager for the U.S. to sell its shares to investors.
GM, the largest U.S. automaker, is preparing to file a registration statement for an IPO this month so the stock sale could be held by November, people familiar with the matter have said. When asked today whether he expects a filing within a couple of weeks, he replied: “No, I don’t.”
The automaker is 61 percent owned by the U.S., which would sell a fifth of its stake in the initial offering and reduce its ownership to less than half, people said. Reducing or eliminating the government’s stake will help with employee morale and sales, Whitacre said.
“We don’t like this label of Government Motors,” he said in a question-and-answer session after his speech, which closed a four-day automotive conference in Acme, Michigan. “We know it turns off customers. It turns us off.”
Whitacre told reporters today that it doesn’t matter whether the IPO is held before the mid-term elections Nov. 2.
“I don’t think that’s really a factor,” he said. “Everybody would like to make it that, but I don’t think that’s really a factor.”
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Steve Girsky, a GM vice chairman, declined to comment on whether GM could still hold an IPO this year.
“There are factors that go into this, one of which is our performance, the other of which is the market performance,” he said. “One of which we control, the other of which we don’t.”
In May, GM reported first-quarter net income of $865 million, helped by higher production and smaller discounts. Whitacre said today second-quarter results will be “impressive.”
“If you liked our first-quarter earnings, stay tuned for our results next week,” he said in the speech.
All eyes were on Whitacre, who was making his first appearance at the Center for Automotive Research’s annual conference. He repeated a common theme this week that the auto industry had come a long way in a year’s time.
“I’d like to congratulate Chrysler and Ford for their progress during this period as well as the suppliers, who toughed it out with all of us,” he said in the speech. “At GM, we were pretty much flat on our backs a year ago. Now, we’re on our feet again, getting into fighting shape and taking the fight back to the marketplace.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Clothier in Acme, Michigan, at mclothier@bloomberg.net |
