July 10 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co., a new automaker majority-owned by the U.S. government, is eliminating layers of management to speed up decisions as it emerges from the remains of bankrupt General Motors Corp.

“The last 100 days have shown us that a company not known for quick action can move very fast, indeed,” Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson said in a blog entry after introducing the new GM. It finished restructuring in 39 days, 3 fewer than Chrysler Group LLC and 3 weeks sooner than GM expected, he said.

The Detroit-based automaker will shrink to four domestic brands from eight, have about $11 billion in U.S. debt and be run by a smaller corps of executives, Henderson said today. International operations, most of which are alliances, will be run out of Shanghai.

GM’s rebirth is a victory for President Barack Obama’s administration and Steven Rattner, the Treasury’s chief auto adviser, because the company was formed faster than the government predicted. GM was forced into Chapter 11 on June 1.

“Starting today, we take the intensity, the decisiveness and the speed of these last several weeks and transfer them from the battlefield triage of the bankruptcy process to the day-to- day operation of the new company,” Henderson said on the blog, part of a campaign to communicate regularly with consumers. U.S. taxpayers own 60.8 percent of GM through federal aid.

Getting Lean

GM merged two strategy boards into one eight-member panel and also eliminated the positions of regional presidents such as Troy Clarke in North America, Henderson said. Nick Reilly, who had been chief of GM’s Asia-Pacific region, will run all GM’s international operations and report to Henderson.

GM had anticipated emerging from bankruptcy July 31, so some personnel decisions aren’t complete, Henderson said. He declined to discuss Clarke’s future, saying some executives will leave and others will have different duties.

“This restructuring is a lot of what GM has been trying to look like for years now,” said Aaron Bragman, an analyst at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Troy, Michigan. “What bankruptcy has done is allowed them to sweep away a lot of undesirable things like debt and uncooperative labor contracts.”

Salaried employment will fall by 20 percent, GM said, and the number of U.S. executives will shrink by 35 percent to help meet Henderson’s goal of shedding management layers to speed decision making.

Lutz’s Role

Bob Lutz, GM’s former new-vehicle chief, returns as vice chairman, responsible for “all creative elements of products and customer relationships,” the company said. Lutz, 77, will report to Henderson and be part of a new executive committee. He had been scheduled to retire at the end of this year.

GM isn’t relying on outside hires to fill jobs because of questions about U.S. government pay restrictions, Henderson told reporters. Some “unusual” choices will be made as personnel are reassigned to new jobs, he said, without giving specifics.

New Chairman Ed Whitacre, the retired CEO of AT&T Inc., will preside over a board that is being reconstituted at the direction of Obama’s auto task force.

“We all want to win, we are going to win,” Whitacre, 67, said at a press conference in Detroit as he took over from interim chairman Kent Kresa.

The dealer ranks will shrink about 42 percent to 3,600 as the new company operates only its Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC brands in the U.S. GM is dropping Pontiac, selling Hummer and Saturn and working to unload Sweden’s Saab.

Old GM

General Motors Co., not the old GM, will keep the proceeds from the Saturn and Hummer sales, Henderson said at the news conference.

The old GM will wind up with assets including 16 abandoned plants, including contaminated factory sites, and a 9-hole golf course in New Jersey. Those will be disposed of by the bankruptcy estate, which is to be run by Albert Koch, and funded with $1.175 billion from the U.S. Treasury.

Motors Liquidation Co. is the name of the entity that remains in Chapter 11. GM listed $176.4 billion in global liabilities when it sought court protection.

Six directors who won’t be part of the new board resigned. They are Erskine Bowles, John Bryan, Armando Codina, George Fisher, Eckhard Pfeiffer and Karen Katen. Fisher had been GM’s lead director.

Trading in shares of the old GM was halted by the OTC Bulletin Board, which listed the stock after the company’s bankruptcy filing. They jumped 30 cents, or 36 percent, to $1.14 at 2:17 p.m. New York time.

New GM

In addition to the federal government, the other shareholders in the new GM are a trust for United Auto Workers’ retiree medical bills, with 17.5 percent; the Canadian and Ontario governments, with 11.7 percent; and Motors Liquidation, with 10 percent.

GM said its $11 billion in U.S. debt excludes $9 billion in preferred stock, and added that the figure “could change under fresh-start accounting.” Total obligations were cut by more than $40 billion, mostly in unsecured debt and liabilities for the UAW health-care fund, GM said.

“We expect to take the company public again as soon as practical, starting next year, and to repay our government loans as soon as possible,” said Henderson, 50, who got the job in March when the government asked then-CEO Rick Wagoner to step aside.

Dwindling Payroll

GM’s manufacturing footprint will shrink in the U.S. to 34 assembly, powertrain and stamping plants by the end of 2010, a decrease from 47 in 2008, according to the company.

By the end of this year, U.S. employment will shrink to 64,000, 30 percent fewer jobs than on Dec. 31.

Slashing debt and operating costs is part of Henderson’s strategy to return to profit after $88 billion in losses since 2004, when GM last posted an annual profit. He’s facing the worst domestic auto market since the early 1980s and a streak of monthly sales declines dating to October 2007.

“There’s a lot of PR and marketing that needs to take place,” said Erich Merkle, an independent auto analyst based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Once you go into bankruptcy, it doesn’t necessarily help change the perception of the company in the minds of the consumer.”

A “Tell Fritz” Web site will be part of GM’s outreach to customers. “Best-in-class” vehicles will be GM’s goal, Henderson said, and development of advanced batteries will be a priority. The Chevrolet Volt electric car, whose development was spearheaded by Lutz, is due in showrooms by the end of 2010.

Same Cars

“Bankruptcy did not change the cars that General Motors dealers sell, and that’s going to be what generates revenue and pays down debt,” said Maryann Keller, president of Maryann Keller & Associates in Stamford, Connecticut. “The cars they were building when they went into bankruptcy are the same that they had today.”

GM joins Chrysler in rushing through government-backed restructurings forced on the companies by Obama’s task force as their cash evaporated because of slumping sales. Administration officials said when GM filed for bankruptcy that the new company would take 60 to 90 days to create, instead of 39.

Chrysler, the third-largest U.S. automaker, filed for Chapter 11 on April 30 and left court protection on June 10 under an alliance with Italy’s Fiat SpA. The Treasury helped bankroll the automakers’ reorganizations, with $65 billion for GM and $12 billion for Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler.

GM’s exit drew praise from congressional allies and scorn from critics of the federal role in the industry’s overhaul.

“The new company is poised to flourish and once again dominate the automobile marketplace,” Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, said in a statement. “Today is a day on which we can all feel good about for GM.”

Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican and member of the panel that oversees the Troubled Asset Relief Program used to assist the automakers, repeated his objections to the government’s involvement.

“It’s amazing how fast a company can emerge from Chapter 11 when you inject $40 billion of involuntary taxpayer capital into the process and trample over the rights of creditors in an unprecedented fashion,” he said in a statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Green in Detroit at jgreen16@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 10, 2009 16:03 EDT