GM, Peugeot Appoint Executive to Oversee Automaking Alliance

General Motors Co. (GM) and PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG) appointed senior executives to a 10-member steering committee in the first move to get their automaking alliance up and running.

Each company will hold five seats on the committee, which will oversee the alliance’s activities and explore new areas of cooperation, Peugeot said today in a statement. The chief financial officers of both companies were named to the body.

“The appointment of the steering committee members marks the first step for the alliance and illustrates the commitment of the two companies to begin working together,” Paris-based Peugeot said in the statement. “It is expected that work on joint projects will commence before the end of this year.”

GM agreed in February to buy 7 percent of Peugeot as part of an alliance to cooperate on purchasing and vehicle development in a bid to cut costs in Europe. Detroit-based GM is looking for ways to turn around its unprofitable Opel brand, while Peugeot seeks to shore up financing after debt more than doubled in the second half of 2011.

GM will be represented on the alliance’s steering committee by Vice Chairman Stephen Girsky, CFO Daniel Ammann, GM Europe President Karl-Friedrich Stracke, product development senior vice president Mary Barra and product planning vice president Stephen Carlisle.

Peugeot appointed executive vice president of programs Jean-Christophe Quemard,CFO Jean-Baptiste de Chatillon, executive vice president of purchasing Yannick Bezard, development chief Guillaume Faury and executive vice president of industrial operations Denis Martin.

Jean-Baptiste Mounier, a spokesman for the French automaker, said the date for the committee’s first meeting hadn’t yet been scheduled.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mathieu Rosemain in Paris at mrosemain@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net