DETROIT (AP) — He doesn't know exactly what the Obama administration wants him to cut, but Fritz Henderson, the new CEO of General Motors Corp., isn't waiting around to find out. Cut deeper. Work harder. Move faster. That's how he described the ailing automaker's urgent effort to meet a June 1 deadline to fix its debt-ridden balance sheet, cut billions in costs and take other steps to transform itself into a profitable entity.
It's the same government-imposed race that Chrysler LLC is running, only GM's smaller neighbor has to cover more distance in half the time.
The Auburn Hills, Mich., automaker must make the same cuts as GM, and sign up Fiat Group SpA as a partner, all in 30 days. Fiat's CEO jetted to Detroit for intense negotiations, but if Chrysler doesn't meet the deadline, it's almost certainly destined for the auction house.
For GM, failing to take quick action means surrendering to court supervision in bankruptcy. The company has resisted bankruptcy talk in the past, but Henderson said Tuesday it is now "certainly more probable."
The companies have yet to receive specifics from the task force on how much more they must cut and where, but Henderson is proceeding with deeper cuts and pulling previously announced measures forward.
"We need to reinvent General Motors, and we need to do it in a very, very abbreviated time frame here in 2009 so that we're not spending our time careening from crisis to crisis in the future," he told reporters at GM's headquarters complex in downtown Detroit.
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