GM Makes Big Changes in Top Management
General Motors reshuffled virtually its entire top management structure below the level of chairman and president in a series of rapid-fire promotions made public Monday.
After announcing that Alexander A. Cunningham, 60, executive vice president for North American automotive operations, would be leaving for health reasons, GM said Lloyd E. Reuss and Robert C. Stempel would become executive vice presidents and members of the board of directors.
Reuss, 49, and Stempel, 52, who had previously run GM’s two domestic car groups, are widely considered the top candidates to succeed Chairman Roger B. Smith and President F. James McDonald when they retire. In his new job, Reuss will run all of the North American auto operations while Stempel will be in charge of truck and bus and foreign operations.
At the same time, GM said that another of its brightest stars, William E. Hoglund, 51, will give up the presidency of its Saturn Corp. to take over the Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac group, succeeding Stempel. Saturn is GM’s attempt to build a small car that is cost-competitive with imports.
Hoglund will be leaving Saturn after only one year on the job and several years before the first car rolls off Saturn’s Tennessee assembly line.
Richard G. Le Fauve, 51, previously group director for operations at the Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac group, will now take over as Saturn president.
Robert Schultz, 55, will replace Reuss as group executive for GM’s other car group, the Chevrolet-Pontiac-GM of Canada group. He was previously group executive in charge of GM’s electrical components group. E. Michael Mutchler, 50, will take over the electrical components group from Schultz, moving up from his position as general manager of GM’s Rochester Products division.
In another move, GM said Malcolm R. Currie, 59, an executive vice president at Hughes Aircraft, has been named president of Delco Electronics, a part of GM’s new Hughes Electronics subsidiary. He will remain a Hughes executive vice president.
