GM board looks to the outside for new CEO

DETROIT — In the search for a new executive to run General Motors, outsiders are in.

The troubled company's new government-appointed board wants GM to change faster than it did under fallen CEO Fritz Henderson, and it will look for a replacement from outside the automaker's bureaucratic culture.

But experts say it will be difficult for the board, which has been critical of management and bordered at times on overbearing, to attract top talent.

There also are pay limits imposed by the government on firms such as GM that have received bailout money, and there's Chairman Ed Whitacre Jr., who made Henderson's life so difficult that he suddenly quit on Tuesday.

Whitacre, 68, who will serve as CEO as a search is conducted, may even want the job himself, said Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management.

"He also is practicing a highly intrusive model of a chairmanship where he's pre-empted a CEO from having the ability to lead," said Sonnenfeld. "That makes it very hard for somebody to step in there."

The board, according to experts, will look for someone with manufacturing and corporate turnaround experience who understands the complexity of a large but struggling business.

Yet finding someone like Ford Motor Co. did when it hired Alan Mulally away from Boeing Co. in 2006 may be difficult, since GM is 61 percent owned by the government and subject to political winds as well.

Because of the pay limits, GM has to find someone who is financially secure and not looking for a quick payoff, said Gerald Meyers, a former chairman of American Motors Corp. who now teaches at the University of Michigan. They also have to understand autos, something that the current board now lacks, Meyers said.

Of GM's 12 board members, only former Wall Street analyst and GM adviser Stephen Girsky has significant automotive experience.

Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, Hyundai Motor America CEO John Krafcik, and Ford executives Joe Hinrichs, Derrick Kuzak, Jim Farley and Mark Fields probably are on the list, experts say.

Other possibilities include auto dealership chain leaders Roger Penske of Penske Automotive Group Inc. and Mike Jackson of AutoNation Inc., Deere & Co. Chairman Robert W. Lane, and Caterpillar Inc. Chairman and CEO Jim Owens.