Ousted GM boss to retire with $8.6m
EX-GENERAL MOTORS (GM) boss Rick Wagoner is set to retire with a pension package worth $8.6m (£5.2m), it emerged yesterday, after he was ousted by the Obama administration in March.
Wagoner, who ran GM for nine years, will get $1.64m every year for the first five years of his retirement, and an annual yearly pension of $74,030 afterwards.
The package, which will take place from 1 August, is 60 per cent lower than it would have been before the embattled carmaker filed for Chapter 11 and saw its assets sold to the new GM.
Over the first five years of retirement, Wagoner will be paid almost $8.6m, down from the approximate $23m figure he was entitled to receive at the end of last year.
Wagoner made the retirement agreement with the old GM, now renamed Motors Liquidation, earlier this month, but details of his pay-off were only made public yesterday.
GM emerged from bankruptcy protection at the start of July as a smaller company, 60 per cent owned by the US treasury. It has taken in $60bn in government funding. As part of its restructuring programme, it is in the process of selling off its GM Europe arm, Opel.
Three bidders are in the running for the group: RHJ, Magna International and Beijing Automotive.
Before he was fired by the White House-appointed autos task force earlier this year for an insufficiently radical recovery plan, Wagoner had argued that bankruptcy would be a more costly alternative to an expanded version of the bailout that began in the final days of the Bush administration.