General Motors Revamps Management

General Motors emerged from bankruptcy on Friday, with chief executive Fritz Henderson promising that the fallen corporate giant will be revived and that "business as usual is over."

Photo: General Motors Revamps Management

The announcement signaled the substantial completion of one of the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history and the next step in what has become a landmark government bailout.

The new GM will have fewer brands, fewer plants and fewer workers. The number of U.S. executives will be cut by 35 percent. But as important as this shrinking, Henderson said, is the need to transform the automaker's culture, long criticized as insular and sluggish. Once the world's largest automaker, GM has been losing market share for decades.

"It is a new era, and everyone associated with the company must realize this and be prepared to change, and fast," Henderson said, Washington Post reports.

Analysts said the government intervention had given GM a new chance and sharply lower operating costs, but left management facing deep challenges given the weak economy and GM's long-running slide in market share.

"I wouldn't really call it a new GM, it is just a smaller GM. That would be more of an apt description. They still have a lot of hurdles to jump," said Mirko Mikelic, portfolio manager at Fifth Third Bank. "Right now, they are in a survival mode."

Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said the new company would shed layers of management, make decisions faster and shed the bureaucracy that critics say contributed to the failure of the 100-year-old automaker, Reuters .