Longtime General Motors executive James Bunnell has stepped out of retirement to help wind down the automaker’s sales operations in Australia and New Zealand.
Bunnell is a 39-year veteran of GM and has overseen the shutdown of different GM brands and operations in a variety of markets. He was in charge closing over 2,000 GM dealers in the United States amid the 2009 global financial crisis and undertook a similar role when GM began scaling back on its international Chevrolet operations as well.
Jim Bunnell
In a bulletin sent to Holden dealers this week, the automaker said Bunnell has “extensive experience at General Motors overseeing orderly and respectful transitions with other brands across the globe, including Chevrolet Europe, India and South Africa.” The bulletin also said Bunnell “supported the changes to the North American dealer network post-bankruptcy in 2009.”
Before he retired in 2018, Bunnell was GM’s executive director of dealer rationalization – a role exclusively dedicated to shutting down retail storefronts.
According to Australian automotive publication Car Advice, GM plans to close down 203 Holden dealerships across the country, impacting up to 9,000 employees. The automaker has offered dealers compensation in lieu of terminating its retail contracts two years early, but the dealers say the compensation is insufficient, covering just 16% of their liability. The Australian Federal Government also deemed the initial compensation to be well under GM’s minimum obligation to the dealers and launched a Senate Inquiry into the Holden shutdown as a result.
GM says it has done the right thing by offering dealers compensation and believes its offer is sufficient.
“Holden is doing the right thing by its dealers during this difficult time,” a GM spokesperson told Car Advice. “We believe the offer is fair. In most cases Holden dealers will receive compensation a factor of four times the average Holden new car profit per unit of all dealerships over the 2017-2019 fiscal years.”
The majority of Holden retail stock is expected to be sold by July. GM will be revoking dealer’s authorized retailer status, but they will be free to continue their service business and perform repairs on Holden vehicles.
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Source: Car Advice
Comments
This is music to my ears.
what about all of the people who have bought one in say the last 4 or 5 yrs.the value of those vehicles will take a big hit
This will be in Canada soon as General Motors of Canada Limited closed shop in November 2019. This is a US Corporation now after the Limited was removed.
jeffrey, you are distributing fake news.
GM just opened a brand new technology center in Markham, Ontario employing over 1500 engineers and research positions. this is one of 3 such facilities. Canada is fully integrated with the US and does not in any way resemble Australia.
John, Why would GM hire 1500 plus engineers to work on EV and self drive anti- crash vehicles along with a new $150 million EV test track behind the newly shut down award winning high quality Oshawa Assembly facility since December 2019 if the didn’t have a plan for the future in Oshawa and Ingersoll Ontario where they build the Chev.Equinox !
Funny how certain people always tend to benefit from the poor decisions that they themselves were a part of to begin with. While the true workers are left Holden i.e. holding the bag.
GM shut down expert Burnell is coming out of Retirement to smooth talk the Holden Dealers as he closes their stores and Their future profits . Imagine all the new Kia Hyundai Honda Toyota and Chinese Cherry dealers switches will take over their market place and If the Oz senate deemed the offers to small GM could be on the hook for billions before they can walk away !
When Australia removed all tariffs on their autos on their tiny market, this was the obvious and inevitable conclusion.
The Australian government did it to the dealers and not GM. Exact same thing has happened for Ford. Effective 2017, even Toyota closed their plant there, but for now, still has their dealers.
Wow, this guy is The Grim Reaper. He must not have a conscience?
Corporations don’t have a conscience…
Well its GM that’s put them selves into this situation they were a mighty company I think they have no idea what the people
want I’ve hade GM cars as long as I have been driving so I really don’t think they will dig them selves out of this hole
It was in 2014 in Europe when GM shut down Chevroelt Dealers…..
NFPC sues Chevrolet
CNPA had time to sharpen its weapons. ” We have a solid case and we have proof that Chevrolet France knew this decision several months before its announcement, about a year before. This clearly means that the brand, contractual partner, hid the sinking from its network while asking it to continue to invest! “Continues Me Bertin.
Without revealing its arguments, the CNPA refers in particular to the announcement of the cessation of sales of the brand to short-term rental companies, but also to a certain organization of the workshop or even a commercial plan launched by Chevrolet financially helping the dealers to resume used Chevrolet to sell them new Opel.
On the other hand, this assignment also relates to the conditions for implementing termination. ” Everything could have gone normally, but Chevrolet knows full well that the two-year notice cannot be full and executed. It is for this reason that the brand offers greater compensation for distributors who sign an agreement before March 31, a deadline which has just been extended to April 30. When you are loyal, you take responsibility and fully compensate the notice, ”says Mr. Bertin.
Finally, last point, according to the lawyer of the CNPA, by encouraging distributors to sign the protocol before the legal termination period, Chevrolet ensures that the initiative for the end of the contract is credited to the distributor and not to the brand. avoid subsequent procedures. ” But Chevrolet no longer plays its role of importer and can no longer deliver cars to its network, which today has to order them directly from Korea, ” continues Renaud Bertin.
Force Chevrolet to negotiate
The key to this procedure: forcing Chevrolet to finally settle at the negotiating table. “ The purpose of this assignment is to place Chevrolet before its responsibilities. If we win, we only ask for one symbolic euro in compensation, but then each distributor who attacks the brand alone will win, ”added Olivier Lamirault, president of the VP dealership branch of the union.
It is intransigence and the absence of any dialogue that has indeed led the CNPA to this extreme posture. The manufacturer imposes on distributors in abandoned markets, a protocol called Tara which grants € 600 compensation per car if the dealer signs a breakout agreement with the brand before March 31, 2013, € 400 per car if the signing occurs before June 30 and € 200 if the agreement is adopted before December 31, 2014 . ” A sum totally ridiculous with regard to the damage suffered, ” storms Olivier Lamirault, president of the branch of concessionaires VP of the union which this time offers, a different method of calculation than the compensation offered by Chevrolet as part of the Tara procedure .
he CNPA wants the compensation to be based on the gross margin obtained overall in the dealership (and not for the car sold) over the best two years of the last three financial years. This margin would then be divided by 12 (to obtain a monthly basis) and then multiplied by 22 months (the legal termination period of 24 months from which 2 months are removed since Chevrolet dealers were only able to order vehicles from the manufacturer during the January and February of this year. Car stocks are said to be empty today since the massive communication campaign on television screens last December.