By Kevin Krolicki and David Bailey
DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co
In an update on GM's progress in the three months since it emerged from bankruptcy, Chief Executive Fritz Henderson also said Mark LaNeve, the company's top U.S. sales executive, would be leaving the company.
LaNeve becomes the latest senior GM executive to leave at a time when Henderson is pushing to change the culture of the 101-year-old automaker under the scrutiny of a new board demanding quick results.
Henderson declined to discuss what he called rumors that Chief Financial Officer Ray Young would also depart.
GM's new 13-member board, led by Chairman Ed Whitacre, met this week in Detroit for the third time since the new company was launched out of bankruptcy with $50 billion in U.S. government funding.
At the board's prior meeting, directors discussed the possible departure of Young and made it clear the U.S. sales team would have to deliver a quick turnaround to avoid a shake-up, people familiar with the discussions have said.
GM ended the third quarter with its global and U.S. market share above initial targets, despite a high-profile bankruptcy that hurt its credibility among consumers.
GM said its global market share was 11.9 percent in the third quarter. Its U.S. market share -- including brands being scrapped, such as Pontiac and Saturn -- was 19.5 percent, down from 22.1 percent at the end of 2008.
Henderson also said GM expects to close deals to sell its Saab and Hummer brands by the end of 2009 and is preparing for an initial public offering in 2010 that would reduce the U.S. government's majority ownership stake.
Discussions with senior representatives of Sichuan Tenzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co, a Chinese company seeking regulatory approval to buy Hummer, continued this week in Detroit, Henderson said.
"The buyer is very interested in getting the deal closed," Henderson said.
BOARD 'PUSHING US TO MOVE FASTER'
Henderson, who took the top job when his predecessor Rick Wagoner stepped down at the request of the Obama administration, said GM is close to the end of a four-year period in which senior management has been focused almost exclusively on managing costs as U.S. auto sales slumped.
"The new board wants us to complete the restructuring actions as much as possible by the end of (2009)," Henderson said on a conference call with reporters and analysts. "They are pushing us to move faster on all the fronts."
GM's U.S. market share has slid from near 29 percent in 2002 as its financial woes have mounted.
As GM aims to reverse that decline, Henderson vowed to speed up decisions on new products and to work to "rebuild" the image of the brands it is keeping, Chevy, Cadillac, GMC and Buick.
"I view this as both a sprint and a marathon," he said.
GM will provide more financial details when reporting third-quarter financial results in mid-November.
The U.S. government now owns about 60 percent of GM, which was unseated last year as the world's largest automaker by Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>.
Since the end of 2008, GM said it has closed four U.S. plants, cut 12,800 hourly workers and dropped 5,400 salaried workers from its payroll.
The automaker needs to cut another 9,200 jobs represented by the United Auto Workers union to bring its U.S. factory work force down to 40,000, the target in its May restructuring plan. At the end of 2008, it had employed 62,000 in U.S. factories.
The update on what GM has achieved in its first 90 days out of Chapter 11 represented a greater disclosure than the details provided to date by GM's smaller rival Chrysler Group LLC.
Chrysler, now under the control of Italy's Fiat SpA
Chrysler, which took $10 billion in U.S. funding, has said it will disclose a new five-year plan on November 4.
The departure of LaNeve, a GM veteran who spearheaded the revival of the automaker's luxury Cadillac brand, was announced in a statement e-mailed to the company's 5,800 remaining dealers on Wednesday.
Henderson said LaNeve is leaving to take a job outside the auto industry but declined to name his new employer.
No successor to LaNeve was immediately named. Henderson said GM was working with the Obama administration to determine what it could pay outside hires under regulations that will restrict executive pay for companies bailed out by taxpayers.
"We are open to bringing in outside talent," Henderson said. But "we need to explain to people how we might pay them."
(Reporting by Kevin Krolicki and David Bailey; additional reporting by Soyoung Kim; editing by Gerald E. McCormick and John Wallace)
