According to a report from the Detroit News, General Motors has not yet decided what it will pay new CEO Mary Barra and president Dan Amman.
Barra, GM’s former vice president of global product development, global purchasing and supply chain, was named GM’s new CEO effective Jan. 15 earlier this week, after GM CEO Dan Akerson announced his early retirement.
Barra will more than certainly earn more than she did at her former position in 2012, which totaled $4.9 million, made up of a $750,000 salary and $3.9 million in awarded stock. She could reportedly be in place to earn even more than Dan Akerson, who earned $11.1 million in 2012, as GM no longer has pay restrictions on its executives’ salaries due to the end of the government bailout.
The Federal Government had put pay restrictions in place for GM executives as a condition for providing $50 billion in bailout compensation. According to the Detroit News, GM and analysts say that lifting the pay restriction will enable the company to recruit the best talent it can.
Akerson told reporters on Tuesday now that the company has no restrictions on pay, it will change its compensation for executives to be “more performance oriented.”
“You’ve got to walk the talk,” Akerson said. “So a good portion of the executive compensation here, on the order of a quarter, will be tied to quality. And not quality as we we define it, but by how the external view.”
The plan would award the executives who help deliver quality work in their field, and would leave compensation out for those who did not. It has not yet been approved.
Comments
Uh oh! Did Lackerson duck out JUST before the money grubbing began?!? Dammit! Somebody! Anybody! Quick! Tell Lieutenant Dan that his boat, “Jenny”, has just set sail without him.
I do hope level heads will prevail. Barra has a LOT riding on this new position. If she proves to be even half the Akerson lackey that Peter De Lorenzo insists she is, then she will doom her female colleagues to having to prove that females can run GM (or any other car company) all over again. She had better play nice with both Reuss and Welburn and maybe give Lutz a call because she will need to pull out all the stops. No mistakes will be allowed by the sole female in the boys club.
She was not my first choice but she is a very smart woman. She will make her own choices and plans and be responsible for what she does. If she makes the right choices pay her well if not then replace her. That is the way it should be for anyone.
You want the best people you have to pay them market value they could get else where as they will not come to you just for the love of the job and to get kicked by idiots on the web that would not qualify to even park the CEO’s car.
She has a good staff of car people around her and she is a rare fiscally responsible Engineer not a Accountant like most of the others so we should see the merit of both of her major skills.
Mark is in a good place to control the product around the world now and if he does half the job he did in NA and Australia things should go fine. Mary just needs to find the way to pay for these things and show a profit while doing so.
He weak spot is she is not a great speaker for product. I hope she lets Mark do this as he show great enthusiasm in new product and can even almost make the Spark sound exciting.
I think the media and other will let Mary have a much easier time doing things as it would not be politically correct to make her look bad. This is one case where GM will benefit from the PC media.
I want to preface this that I know Reuss but never met Barra.
Reuss is a great guy and knows his cars. Very level headed. Great guy. Would make a great CEO.
BUT
From what I have read of Barra and how my wife is in her job I think she is the right choice. The mens club is very strong and decisions are made sometimes with lopsided opinions and more what they feel than the data and information would suggest. Sometimes this is a good thing. ie Lutz telling us to put more money into the product even though the numbers say we will lose profit, but in the end the car sells more on some of the little things (interior content for instance). But I think more often a more level headed person, like Barra, is the better choice. And from what I can tell Reuss agrees.
Did not state what I was feel very well but its hard to quantify in words.
I too do not see Mark having an issue here. Even with where he is at he is next in line. This will let Mary do the things popular and not too popular now and leave him a better playing field to work with new product.
Knowing what I know of Lutz I do not see him even having an issue here. In his books he points out guys like him need counterbalanced buy fiscally responsible people that know how to work with product people. I see Mary as one who can do this very easily.
Mark and Mary should make for a formidable team at GM.