GM’s Stempel Denies Being Asked to Step Down : Auto industry: Analysts question the purpose of such a move, since he is not running daily operations.

Embattled General Motors Chairman Robert C. Stempel denied any knowledge of an effort by GM’s board to displace him and said in a public appearance here Wednesday that he hasn’t been asked to step down.

But to the frustration of GM officials, none of the unnamed directors reportedly urging the 59-year-old Stempel to retire from atop the ailing industrial firm stepped forward publicly to voice support for him.

“The silence is deafening,” admitted a GM manager.

Stempel was responding to a report in Wednesday’s Washington Post that non-management members of GM’s board want him to step aside.

The report could not be confirmed, and some GM observers said easing Stempel out would accomplish little because he is no longer directly responsible for GM’s domestic car and truck business, the source of GM’s financial woes. Others fretted that ousting the well-liked Stempel would worsen already frayed morale.

But the denials by Stempel and GM’s corporate spokesmen were not necessarily conclusive because of the growing independence of the company’s board members, whose strategies might be unknown at GM headquarters.

Last April, GM’s board intervened to trim Stempel’s authority and oust his hand-picked president while giving more power to new President John F. Smith Jr. Analysts now say Smith is running the heart of the company while Stempel addresses strategic issues, often in the public arena.

“I don’t know what purpose his stepping down would serve. He’s not involved in the day-to-day operations of the company,” said GM expert Maryann Keller of Furman Selz Inc. in New York.

But some board members remain impatient with GM’s progress in stopping its financial hemorrhaging and loss of auto market share. The company, which lost $4.45 billion in 1991, indicates it lost $850 million in the third quarter this year. Stempel has been chairman and chief executive since August, 1990.

If Stempel leaves, the leading candidate to replace him as chairman is director John Smale, retired chairman of Procter & Gamble, who led last April’s revolt and replaced Stempel as chairman of the board’s key executive committee.

Increasingly, activist investors are pushing to separate the roles of chairman and chief executive in struggling firms to ensure the board’s independence, a move that might make sense at GM, one big GM shareholder said Wednesday.

“We have not been pressing for Stempel’s removal,” said Dale Hanson, chief executive of the California Public Employee Retirement System, owner of about 4 million GM shares, or 1%. “But we advocate separating the CEO and chair in troubled companies. If Smale was named as an interim chair, that might not be all bad.”

If that didn’t persuade Stempel to leave voluntarily, damaged pride might, said one observer: “Bob Stempel is a proud man. It must be hard for him to say he’s still in charge and realize that it isn’t true.”

As he entered an industry gathering that marked his third speech in three days since a two-day hospitalization for high blood pressure, Stempel snapped, “No!” to reporters asking if he has been asked to step down. “The rumors are not true.”

But the absence of any reassuring words from outside members of GM’s board--the 12 of 15 directors who aren’t employed by GM--contrasted with Smale’s public repudiation of April press reports questioning Stempel’s power.

None of the 12 outside board members contacted directly or indirectly on Wednesday would comment on the latest news report.