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Mr Reuss ran GM-Holden from Melbourne for 18 months. He left Australia in September. In a press conference with US journalists, Mr Reuss praised GM-Holden and the Federal Government's initiative to help the local car industry through the global financial crisis.
He was responsible for cementing a financial plan that allowed the Australian arm to survive the global shake-out triggered by GM's move into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Some analysts see his experience here as a template for change at GM, the famous car maker axing thousands of jobs globally, killing four of its brands and being pump-primed by a $US50 billion US government bailout.
Mr Reuss admitted that during the GM's Chapter 11 proceedings, the local operations were effectively cut off from Detroit. "My experience in Holden - I'm an engineer - and going through a parent company's bankruptcy in Holden as a subsidiary means that you get everything cut off in a foreign country on a funding basis to go put back into product development and sell and market and to become a stand alone entity, which is what we did," he said.
"Instead of bailout money or loans through this financial crisis, we put together a plan that was a co-investment of about $6.3 billion with the government to reinvent Holden, Ford and Toyota. "We got that through."
Reuss said that as the Australian car industry reinvented itself "we put through a lot of marketing and sales on a self-funded basis that drove a lot of cash generation. As GMAC and GE Capital pulled out of the market on a finance basis we went in with a backstop to finance those companies," he said.
"So this was make your own luck, you're a long way from anything else and hope you guys survive. We more than survived. We put the company back into a place where it's going to make a lot of money. I think that experience for me going in (to the new role) as an engineer - I was a financier, banker, engineer, and product development manufacturing guy - was very challenging and I had a blast."
Reuss acknowledged that there was a need for great change at GM. "Now we're positioning ourselves to win and have the American people proud of us," he said.
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