Four CEO's in slightly over one year. Could this mean four different sets of goals for GM? Hope that the new CEO continues with geographical expansion and accelerates electrification of the fleet.

There have been rumors, but I think Whitacre is a transition guy, he makes the big decisions and moves early on, but is not the guy for the day to day long haul.

GM could have put forward a long drawn out process of finding a new CEO before, but Whitacre stepped up knowing it would happen fast and change later. The new CEO is on the board and seems qualified, the market will respond when they make their IPO.

My theory is this new guy will only last maybe a year or two, and there will be yet another CEO. This will go on until GM is back in private control. The government needed to transform GM, but they wanted to do it by creating the fewest waves possible. Firing Waggoner, bringing in Whitacre to knock heads together and make the changes government wanted to make, then going back to a Waggoner type CEO and reducing government control to less than 50% is a lot of change attributable to just few players --- Whitacre winds up looking like the villain. By having a revolving door at the top for a while, responsibility for changes are distributed / diffused over more people, so there is less of a target for the workers in case they decide to wage a pitchfork rebellion. If the government never took over and simply gave GM a loan, Waggoner would still be in charge, and it is doubtful that the meaningful structural reforms would ever have taken place within the organization.

Most of the success in GM's $1B+ net profitability this quarter is due to ex-Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell. This is the magic guy who managed the quick rinse BK and repay of the $8.5B fed loans. The best thing for GM is to be out from under the thick black layers of government bureaucracy which are nests of corrosive duplicated effort.

One thing government does not know how to do is run a business (Freddie/Fannie?) GM's stunning financial success is entirely due to the expertise and savvy of Liddell and company.

Waggoner still gets credit along with Bob Lutz for green lighting the Volt project which will drive the IPO for further EV expansion. Ed Whitacre provided the stability expected of a CEO which Akerson will continue.

I don't know exactly what Liddell has done, but I think GM getting rid of Saturn and Pontiac, renegotiating dealership agreements (including getting rid of a bunch of dealers), building cars with more of a quality mentality and less of a quantity mentality, going into bankruptcy and getting rid of a bunch of assets that were a drain on the balance sheet (via Motors Liquidation https://www.motorsliquidation.com/) has helped tremendously to lead to profitability.

The Volt has too big of a battery and too big of an engine and too big of a price. GM just want to show again that over priced electric cars cannot make it in the market. ..HG..