He's back...sort of. Ousted GM Chairman Rick Wagoner resurfaces.
Former GM chairman G. Richard Wagoner has avoided the spotlight since he was fired by President Barack Obama’s automotive task force, but now appears ready to launch a second career, serving as a director on various corporate and educational boards.
His newest appointment lets Wagoner put at least one foot back into the auto industry. Aleris International, Inc. says the 57-year-old Wagoner has been elected to its Board of Directors and to the Board of Directors of Aleris Holding Company, its parent. In turn, Aleris Holding Company is majority owned by Oaktree Capital Management, a private equity firm.
“We are extremely pleased to welcome Rick to the Aleris board,” said Steven J. Demetriou, Aleris chairman and chief executive officer. “He brings a wealth of expertise that will be invaluable to Aleris as we continue to strengthen our company and grow.”
A former college basketball star, the former GM chairman also serves his alma mater as vice chair of the Board of Trustees of Duke University and a member of the Board of Dean’s Advisors of the Harvard Business School, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business Advisory Board and the Detroit Country Day School Board.
And despite his occasional tiffs with the media, Qagoner also was recently elected director of The troubled Washington Post Company and sits on the Mayor of Shanghai’s International Business Leaders Advisory Council.
Wagoner’s long career at General Motors came to an abrupt end in March 2009, when he was fired by the White House as a first step towards putting GM into Chapter 11 reorganization in return for a federal bailout. (The ousted CEO was actually allowed to formally retire in August 2009.) Wagoner was replaced by Fritz Henderson, another GM “lifer,” who steered the maker through the bankruptcy process but was then ousted himself in November. That coup was engineered by Ed Whitacre, Jr., then GM’s president, who has since been appointed its CEO, as well as president and chairman.
(Whitacre wants to sell off government’s 61% stake in GM. Click Here for more.)Wagoner, who believed bankruptcy would spell the end of GM, has not talked publicly about his dismissal. But former auto czar Steve Rattner is expected to discuss the CEO’s departure in his new book, which is due out this autumn.
Headquartered in Beechwood, Ohio, privately-held Aleris International Inc. is considered a global leader in aluminum rolled products and extrusions, aluminum recycling and alloy production. It operates more than 40 production facilities in the Americas, Europe and Asia.
Oaktree Capital Management, a private equity firm based in Los Angles, has 14 offices around the world and more than $76 billion in investments under active management, according to the company’s website.