General Motors Co. appointed international operations chief Nick Reilly to oversee its Adam Opel GmbH division in Europe on an interim basis as the largest U.S. automaker reorganizes the unprofitable division.
Reilly, 59, will help Ruesselsheim, Germany-based Opel and its Vauxhall brand in the U.K. develop a long-term strategy while GM looks for a permanent head of its European business, the carmaker said today in a statement.
The executive ran Vauxhall in the late 1990s and led GM's European sales for less than a year before his appointment in 2002 to oversee GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. in South Korea. Reilly, who has led GM's international business since July, succeeds Carl-Peter Forster, who stepped down from the Opel post three days after GM decided on Nov. 3 to keep the division instead of selling it to Magna International Inc.
"Slashing costs will be Reilly's main assignment," said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen in western Germany. "He has no choice but to step on the spending brakes."
GM's board agreed to keep full ownership of Opel rather than proceed with the sale of a 55 percent stake to Aurora, Ontario-based Magna, Canada's largest car-parts maker, and Russian partner OAO Sberbank. The reversal angered Opel's unions as well as German politicians, who had lobbied for a transaction with Magna and pledged 4.5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) in government aid.
'Deep Experience'
"With his deep experience with the Opel and Vauxhall brands, Nick is well suited to lead this transition and to work toward the earliest possible normalization of the business," GM Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson said in the statement.
The search for Opel's new chief will take months rather than weeks, without stretching to "a lot of months," Henderson said at a news conference today in Ruesselsheim. The person should speak German and understand European markets, and doesn't have to be from an automaker, he said.
GM's main challenge in Europe is "rebuilding confidence and trust with the workforce and the communities in which we operate," Henderson said.
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