General Motors Co. (GM) named Mary Barra to succeed Dan Akerson as chief executive officer, completing the GM insider’s rise from a factory-floor worker to the industry’s first female CEO after more than a century of global automaking.
Barra, 51, takes over a company that has emerged from near-collapse a half decade ago, after an infusion of government cash and outside managers. Her elevation was announced a day after the U.S. government said it had sold its final shares of GM.
An engineer who holds a Stanford MBA, Barra inherits a company that is at its leanest in decades and light on debt. It has one of the U.S.’s newest and most acclaimed lineups, and a newfound strength in small and midsize cars, from the Chevrolet Cruze to the Cadillac CTS. It also faces threats, ranging from Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp. (7203), which is increasingly using no-interest loans to win business, to Tesla Motors Inc., which Akerson has identified as an industry disruptor.
With Barra’s appointment, GM returns to the hands of an in-house manager after two leaders plucked from outside Detroit since 2009. A Pontiac die maker’s daughter who started as an intern more than 30 years ago, Barra was most recently the chief of product development and quality for all GM cars and trucks, where she oversaw the introduction of the well-received Chevrolet Impala and cut costs by standardizing parts.
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