Edward E. “Big Ed” Whitacre Jr., a long tall Texan who likes pinning down rattlesnakes and knocking them into no-more with a rock to the head, will take over as chairman of “the New GM” after it finishes reorganizing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy later this summer.
In choosing Whitacre, 67, General Motors is entrusting its future to the former chairman and CEO of AT&T, Inc., as well as the companies from which it was formed - including SBC Communications, which bought AT&T for $16 billion and Ameritech for $62 billion during his tenure.
After he took over as CEO of SBC in 1990, the company’s market value soared from $22 billion to a peak of $234 billion in 2007, when Whitacre retired from AT&T and joined the business faculty at Texas Lutheran University. He was succeeded at the communications mammoth by Randall Stephenson.
Edward E. Whitacre Jr.
Interim GM chairman Kent Kresa will remain until the reorganization is complete, and then join Whitacre, GM president and CEO Frederick “Fritz” Henderson, and current board members Philip Laskawy, Kathryn Marinello, Erroll Davis, Jr., and Neville Isdell as “the nucleus of the New GM board, providing management oversight and a continuing commitment to transparency and world-class standards of corporate governance,” according to GM’s press release.
GM is in the process of choosing four more directors. Two others will be nominated by the United Auto Workers’ Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) and the Canadian government.
Whitacre, who has an industrial engineering degree from Texas Tech, currently serves on the boards of ExxonMobil and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.
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