After Opel reversal, GM CEO in spotlight

By James B. Kelleher

DETROIT (Reuters) - At the new GM, the buck now stops with the board.

The surprise decision by General Motors Co to drop a plan supported by Chief Executive Fritz Henderson to sell the company's Opel unit has raised new questions about the standing of the veteran GM insider after just six months on the job.

"It isn't clear who is running GM," said Peter Morici, a professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. "They've got a problem here."

Henderson, who joined GM in 1984 and worked his way up as a financial manager, has only been in charge of GM since this spring, when the Obama administration ousted Rick Wagoner and ordered the company to appoint outsiders to its hitherto insider-dominated board.

The reversal on selling Opel to a group led by Canada's Magna International Inc (MGa.TO) suggests to some the new directors -- including Ed Whitacre, the former AT&T Inc CEO who now serves as GM's chairman -- are not deferring to anyone. Noteven Henderson, who expressed confidence recently the Opel sale would be wrapped up soon.

The sale was controversial from the start.

"My view was always if at the end of this Opel ended up outside GM, that was a strategic mistake," Mike Jackson, the head of Auto Nation, told the Reuters Auto Summit in Detroit.

John Smith, a GM group vice president and chief negotiator in the Opel restructuring, told reporters on Wednesday that the decision not to sell Opel was debated vigorously within GM.