General Motors (NYSE: GM) Names Edward Whiteacre, Former AT&T CEO, as New Chairman

Edward Whiteacre, Jr., the former CEO and chairman of telecommunications giant AT&T Inc. (NYSE: ATT) , has become the new chairman of General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM).

Whiteacre will eventually replace Kent Kresa, who will remain GM's interim chairman until the automaker is reorganized as a new company after receiving government assistance.

Whitacre was chairman and chief executive of AT&T and its predecessor companies from 1990 to 2007. He also sits on the boards of Exxon Mobil Corp. and the railroad company Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

During his tenure at AT&T, Whiteacre turned the company from a regional corporation to the nation’s largest provider of wireless, broadband and traditional phone services. AT&T, formerly Southwestern Bell and then SBC Corporation, was the smallest of the “Baby Bells” that were formed after the government disbanded AT&T’s national monopoly.

Whitacre will join the nucleus of a new board that will include Kresa and current members Philip A. Laskawy, Kathryn V. Marinello, Erroll B. Davis Jr., E. Neville Isdell and CEO Fritz Henderson. The remaining six members will likely retire once GM is fully reorganized.

Kresa, who has been on the board since 2003, was named the interim chairman after Rick Wagoner was forced out as chairman and CEO by the Obama administration. Henderson, then GM’s president and chief operating officer, was named CEO and continues in that role.

Under terms of a proposed bankruptcy agreement, the U.S. and Canadian governments will own nearly 75 percent of General Motors, with the U.S. holding a 60 percent controlling stake and Canada with 12.5 percent. The UAW would get a 17.5 percent stake and bondholders would end up with the remaining 10 percent. Existing stockholders would be wiped out.

Kresa also said GM would resume compensating board members at a more normal level. The board has been working for $1 per year since GM began taking government loans last year. Although normal level was not specified, nonemployee board members previously received $200,000 per year, with $140,000 of that deferred in shares of GM common stock.

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