Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co.’s 13-member board, overhauled with 7 new directors after bankruptcy, will review bids for the Opel brand as part of its first meeting beginning today, people familiar with the planning said.

The two-day gathering in Detroit includes a discussion of asset sales, committee assignments and company goals, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Directors also will receive a product overview at GM’s technical center and test-drive vehicles, the people said.

Ed Whitacre, the former chief executive officer of AT&T Inc., makes his boardroom debut as GM chairman. He’ll be joined by six holdover directors and a half dozen appointees named by the Treasury, the governments of Canada and Ontario and a union trust, which own most of the biggest U.S. automaker.

“Who made up this agenda?” said Rebecca Lindland, an IHS Global Insight Inc. analyst in Lexington, Massachusetts. “It seems to be asking an awful lot of a group of people who are still getting to know each other.”

Whitacre, 67, who spent 17 years as chairman and CEO at Dallas-based AT&T and predecessor SBC Communications Inc., was named to his post on June 9, calling the job a “public service” while adding, “I don’t know anything about cars.”

Stephen Girsky, a former Morgan Stanley equity analyst, was appointed in June as the board representative for the United Auto Workers, and GM added five government-backed directors on July 23, including TPG Capital LP founder David Bonderman and Carlyle Group’s Daniel Akerson.

Meeting Plan

A spokesman for Detroit-based GM, Tom Wilkinson, said the biggest U.S. automaker wasn’t commenting on the directors’ plans beyond saying they would convene in early August for their first meeting since the company left bankruptcy on July 10.

What the directors can achieve at the gathering depends largely on how much work was done in advance, said Steve Kaplan, a business professor at the University of Chicago.

“How quickly do they actually have to commit to making these decisions?” Kaplan said. “The people who were put on have experience with governance and have experience being tough, and on the other hand they were put there for political reasons.”

Board approval of a sale of money-losing Opel is part of GM’s effort to salvage the Russelsheim, Germany-based unit.

GM, German Differences

While GM’s lead negotiator, John Smith, has said an offer from private-equity firm RHJ International SA would be simpler to execute, Germany’s government favors the bid from Canadian auto-parts maker Magna International Inc. as part of a bailout to save jobs. GM and Germany set aside a proposal from Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co.

The German government plans to hold talks with RHJ and Magna this week, Steffen Moritz, an Economy ministry spokesman, told reporters in Berlin today, without giving details.

Opel may be forced into bankruptcy should GM and Germany fail to agree on a buyer, three people close to the trust that controls the unit said on July 31. GM will make a recommendation to the trust once a bid is approved by the board and the Treasury, people familiar with the process said last week. GM has said it prefers a sale to liquidation.

The German unit remains vital even as GM seeks to unload a majority stake, because the automaker uses engineering from those autos in models sold elsewhere, said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Opel’s Advantages

“They need to have Opel for mid-sized and small cars, and a lot of their best new product is coming from Europe,” Cole said. “They don’t want to lose that, and they don’t want others to have it.”

Opel’s future is only one of the asset sales that will be overseen by the new board, which also will preside over the pending disposals of the Hummer and Saturn brands as GM shrinks operations to end $88 billion in losses since 2004.

GM dropped the Pontiac line and is selling Trollhaettan, Sweden-based Saab, a transaction that when completed will reduce the automaker’s U.S. brands to four from eight.

Unloading assets and adding new leadership at the board and management levels were part of GM’s bankruptcy strategy. General Motors Corp. filed for Chapter 11 on June 1 and sold most of its assets to the new General Motors Co., with the Treasury as the largest shareholder.

New Board Members

Besides Whitacre, Bonderman, Akerson and Girsky, the new board members are two former CEOs, Robert D. Krebs of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. and Patricia F. Russo of Alcatel-Lucent SA, and Carol Stephenson, dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

Directors will start to work with the senior executive team completed last week by CEO Fritz Henderson, 50, who took the job in March when President Barack Obama’s auto task force asked Rick Wagoner to step aside.

The board begins meeting the same day that automakers announce U.S. sales for July, which were buoyed by the government’s “cash-for-clunkers” incentive program. GM’s first-half domestic sales tumbled 40 percent.

Outside Detroit, the directors will visit GM’s technical center in suburban Warren for an introduction to the automaker’s products and drive new vehicles at the company test track in Milford, said the people familiar with the board’s plans.

To contact the reporters on this story: Katie Merx in Southfield, Michigan, at kmerx@bloomberg.net; Mike Ramsey in Southfield, Michigan at mramsey6@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 3, 2009 07:08 EDT