Dan Akerson Takes the Wheel at GM

For the directors of General Motors, this should have been a summer to savor. The carmaker has been preparing an initial public offering expected to sell up to $16 billion worth of stock, an impressive sum for an enterprise that was close to dead—filing for bankruptcy protection in June 2009, ceding majority ownership to the U.S. government, cutting 60,000 jobs since 2007, and shedding tens of billions in debt. When GM emerged from Chapter 11 in July 2009, it toughened up its board, replacing most directors and adding private equity star David Bonderman, a founding partner of TPG Capital, as well as three members chosen by the U.S. Treasury's Auto Task Force as possible chief executive officers: former telecom CEOs Edward E. Whitacre Jr. AT&T (T), Patricia Russo (Alcatel-Lucent), and Daniel F. Akerson (Nextel), who in recent years had run the largest private equity fund at the Carlyle Group. In December the new board set about remaking GM management, ousting CEO Fritz Henderson and installing Whitacre, who'd been chairman. He soon chalked up two successive quarters of profitability, a sign GM had regained the stability it needed to return to the public markets.

Then the triumphant summer turned weird. In June and July, investment bankers preparing for GM's IPO road show asked Whitacre the question every institutional investor would want to know: How long did he plan to stay on as CEO? Whitacre didn't answer, and some of GM's directors became concerned. Those who knew him best suspected the 68-year-old Texan, impatient with federal oversight, wanted to leave by yearend—a timetable that wouldn't work at a company going public. Before GM's Aug. 2 board meeting, Whitacre's attorneys told him he would have to disclose his plans in the IPO filing. At the meeting, board members wanted a decision—either stay into next year, they said, or leave now, according to three people with direct knowledge of the talks. To the surprise and irritation of some directors, Whitacre bowed out.