This 'hand-in-glove' working relationship between GM Auto and GMAC provides ample benefits to our dealers and our stockholders, and is critical to our ability to compete in the marketplace, |
This agreement is another important milestone in the turnaround of General Motors. |
This has been a difficult period for all of us at GM but I'm confident that by working together we can and will get through this, |
This is a difficult but necessary decision, and it was made only after the greatest deliberation. A number of other U.S. companies have already taken similar action in the face of these rising costs and increasing global competition. In particular, U.S. health-care costs continue to rise at high rates. When these benefits were conceived decades ago, no one could have foreseen the explosive cost inflation that we have been experiencing in recent years. These costs are simply not sustainable. |
This is a game that's going to play as long as you're playing it. It's never going to end. It'll go until I retire, and when the next person has the job, they'll be on it too. |
This is a huge move, |
This is a very big step forward that we will build on, ... the single biggest cost reduction that we've probably been able to announce in a single day in the history of G.M. |
This is the kind of thing we need to do. I don't have a big scoreboard in my office, depicting which groups had taken cuts. I think you can say the whole family is participating in the effort to turn GM around. |
This really highlights one of the weaknesses of our business model is too much reliance on those products (large SUVs and pickups) for profit and not enough profitability from those other products, |
This transaction will allow us to preserve our business relationship, while further building up GM's already significant liquidity position during this critical phase of our turnaround. |
To make this happen, we need to bring down costs and build the necessary infrastructure -- and the best way to do that is by business and government working together. |
Today we are announcing a significant update on our plan to address our health-care burden, which is the cornerstone of our efforts to reduce structural costs by a $5 billion (US) run rate by the end next year. |
We already have made some significant moves to improve our competitiveness in the long term. We need to do more - and we will. |
We are confronting a dramatic change in our industry and in the global competitive environment, and that requires us to look for additional ways to reduce financial risk and improve our competitiveness for the long term. |
We are disappointed with our own sales and market share results so far this year, |