Cerberus faces unwelcome scrutiny in autos struggle

By Megan Davies and Poornima Gupta

NEW YORK/DETROIT (Reuters) - The woes of the American auto industry have put secretive private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management and co-founder Stephen Feinberg in the one place they don't want to be -- the spotlight.

The $27 billion (£18 billion) private equity company, named after the multiheaded dog that guards the gates of the underworld, abhors publicity, but its struggling Chrysler LLC unit has been ardently courting the public as it tries to save itself.

Chrysler, along with rival automakers Ford Motor Co (F.N) and General Motors Corp GM.N, have gone to Washington cap-in-hand to plead for cash to rescue Detroit.

This has placed the firm and Feinberg -- who has shunned cameras and rarely given interviews -- in the uncomfortable position of asking for public money to save a private enterprise.

Cerberus was co-founded by Feinberg and Bill Richter, now senior managing director at the firm.

Feinberg -- a frequent contributor to Republican coffers -- seems content to let fellow executives John Snow, a former treasury secretary in the current Bush administration, and Dan Quayle, who was vice president under former president George H. W. Bush, be the famous names at his company.

Snow's title is chairman of Cerberus Capital Management. Quayle is chairman of Cerberus Global Investments.

It has been Snow who has been the public face of the Chrysler deal. Snow talked in a press release at the time of the deal about the "inherent strength of U.S. manufacturing and of the U.S. auto industry" -- a judgment called into question by the current economic crisis.