General Motors Co. Named its First Female Chief Executive

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Tuesday, the General Motors Company has named its first female chief executive, promoting Mary Barra, a former inter,n who over three decades with the company rose to head the automaker’s global product development, to its top position. Mary Barra has worked at GM for 33 years, rising through a series of manufacturing, engineering and senior staff positions. GM announced that company veteran Mary Barra would succeed Dan Akerson as chief executive on January 15. Dan Akerson is the man who guided GM through most of the period since it emerged from bankruptcy in 2009.

“I will leave with great satisfaction in what we have accomplished, great optimism over what is ahead and great pride that we are restoring General Motors as America’s standard bearer in the global auto industry,” Akerson, 65, stated.

  

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The LA Times Reports Dan Ammann, 41, GM’s chief financial officer, was named company president and will assume responsibility for the company’s regional operations around the world.  The global Chevrolet and Cadillac brand organizations and GM Financial will also report to Ammann.

In a note released Tuesday morning following the Mary Barra news, Bank of America Merrill Lynch characterized the GM succession plans as “somewhat earlier than expected,” but “relatively consistent with market expectations.”

Mary Barra now joins a growing list of other prominent female chief executives across a wide swath of US sectors. Some other prominent female CEOs include IBM’s Virginia Rometty, Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard, Patricia Woertz at Archer Daniels Midland, Ellen Kullman at DuPont and Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer, who also serves on the board of the world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores.

Bank of America is quoted as saying that Mary Barra is “well positioned to lead the General Motors Company to future success.”

Image Credit: The LA Times