WASHINGTON – General Motors Co. said it plans to recall more than 243,000 model year 2009/2010 crossover sport utilities, mainly in the United States, to inspect safety belts for possible damage, Reuters reported.

The automaker and regulators said most of the Chevy Traverse, Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Saturn Outlook vehicles were shipped within the United States. Several thousands others were exported to Canada, Mexico, China, Saudi Arabia and other countries.

GM said potential damage to the second-row safety belts could make it appear as if the latch were properly secured when it was not.

The problem was discovered during warranty returns, and any damage was cosmetic in the vast majority of cases, GM said in documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

There are no known cases of belts failing in a crash, GM said.

GM said it would begin notifying owners by letter this month to make appointments with dealership service departments for repairs.

NEW YORK – Wall Street banks led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley stand to make a combined $120 million on General Motors Co.’s initial public offering. If it weren’t for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., they could have made four times as much, Bloomberg reported.

In a pitch to the U.S. Treasury in May, Goldman Sachs offered to accept a fee of 0.75 percent, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. That’s a fraction of the 3 percent banks typically charge on the largest IPOs and well below the 2 percent offered by Bank of America Corp. and other banks that presented to Treasury, said the people, speaking anonymously because the matter is private.

Goldman Sachs, which had just been sued for fraud by federal regulators and has ties to GM competitor Ford Motor Co., didn’t get a top role in the IPO. The government imposed the fee pitched by Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn and his five-person team on all underwriters, angering the banks, the people said.

“The fact the other banks are furious at Goldman is not surprising,” said Samuel Hayes, a professor emeritus of investment banking at Harvard Business School in Boston. “They feel it gave the government a real lever to force down fees on the underwriters. But the deal still has a lot of marquee value.”

Banks involved in the deal include lead managers JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, as well as Bank of America and Citigroup Inc., among others. Some banks made different concessions in their pitches to the Treasury. Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America and Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group AG offered to use some of their fees to buy GM vehicles or to subsidize employee purchases of GM cars and trucks, according to the people with knowledge of the matter.

Goldman Sachs spokeswoman Andrea Rachman and spokespeople for the other banks declined to comment. Treasury spokesman Mark Paustenbach also declined to comment.

Goldman Sachs will have a role in the offering, as will Credit Suisse, said the people. Five U.S. banks pitched GM and the Treasury on May 19 in Washington, and non-U.S. lenders made presentations in early June. All sent top executives, such as JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and John Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley.

Treasury officials including Ronald Bloom, chief of the auto task force, and GM executives were concerned that if it became public the government hadn’t picked Goldman Sachs’s low bid, they would face criticism for wasting taxpayer money because of a bias against the firm, the people said. The officials and executives decided, in conjunction with Lazard Ltd., which is advising Treasury, to use the Goldman Sachs bid and impose it on other banks.

NEW YORK – While the focus at General Motors Co. in the past several months has been on the change to new marketing chief Joel Ewanick, on reshaping Chevrolet and Cadillac and on the automaker’s impending initial public offering, very quietly the Buick brand has become a driving force for the company, Automotive News reported.

A new design and a marketing shift targeting a younger audience have helped U.S. sales of Buick’s Enclave, Regal and LaCrosse skyrocket since last year — and even more so in China, where it is the No. 1 brand.

To steal a line from the classic Oldsmobile campaign, this is not your (grand)father’s car any more.

That campaign didn’t increase sales of Oldsmobiles that much, and it remains to be seen whether the Buick surge can be sustained. But Ewanick is confident that the brand is back.

“Buick is just nothing but blue sky,” he said. “It’s the fastest-growing brand in America, and we’re selling LaCrosse as fast as we can get them. It’s a great success story.”

After 25 years of falling sales, GM sold 137 percent more Buicks in July than it did in July 2009. Through the first seven months of this year, sales are up 60 percent over the same period last year. GM is on track to sell more than 148,000 Buicks in the United States this year, up from 102,306 last year and 137,197 in 2008.

How did Buick’s sales rebound? And how has the brand stuck — fairly or unfairly — with the tag of being a “senior citizen’s car” turned its fortunes around?

“It’s a change in design that appeals to younger people,” said Charles Krome, a writer and analyst for Autotropolis.com. “It’s much more up to date and comparable to what’s out there on the market. And GM is really making an effort to get past that whole ‘grandfatherly’ car thing with the marketing to younger customers.”

Last year GM decided to end its relationship with golfer Tiger Woods (before his much-publicized personal problems) and to stop sponsoring the Buick Open. The flailing economy was blamed as well as GM’s subsequent need for a $50 billion government bailout. But it was also a calculated move because the golf community tends to skew old.

GM is positioning Buick as a luxury brand — often comparing it to Lexus and Acura — and reaching out to younger buyers while maintaining an Average Joe pricing structure. The average age of a Buick buyer has dropped to 61 from 64 in the past 18 months, according to autoguide.com. That’s still high compared with the average mid-50s buyer for Lexus and Acura, but it shows Buick’s commitment to marketing to a younger audience.

Buick also has embraced social media. In June, GM launched a Web site, momentoftruth.com, in which it invites comments about the 2011 Buick Regal — good, bad or indifferent.

One woman wrote, “Isn’t Buick Regal just a car for Jersey-ites in their 80s?” while another wrote on Buick’s Facebook page, “A definate [sic] American eyebrow raiser that says HMMMMM!!! I Love It!!”

The company also has hosted get-together parties in several cities and handed out Flip video cameras for attendees to record their thoughts on the car. The videos are then posted to the site.

“Straightforward advertising is what they had been doing, letting the car be the hero, talking about the features, letting people see the styling,” Ewanick said. “What we need to do in quick order is to start to frame and define what that brand is going to stand for. We’re working on that right now.”

GM is exploring whether to expand the Buick lineup to six or seven models — including a hybrid version of the LaCrosse sedan, a baby crossover and a compact sedan. The Lucerne sedan will be dropped after the 2011 model year.

WASHINGTON – The White House praised the decision of General Motors Co.’s board to name Daniel Akerson as the new chief executive, reported The Detroit News.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs also praised the service of GM chairman and CEO Edward Whitacre Jr., who will turn over the reins to Akerson on Sept. 1 as CEO. Akerson will assume Whitacre’s duties as chairman on Jan. 1.

“Our belief is that Dan Akerson is a proven and well-respected individual that will carry on what Ed and others have started in restructuring an auto company that not too long ago was on the brink of extinction,” Gibbs told reporters. “They announced again yesterday a quarterly profit. They are on the upswing, as the other auto companies are, as well.”

Gibbs said President Barack Obama will be briefed on the change in management. “We are grateful for, and I think the country should be grateful for, the service and the sacrifice of Ed Whitacre,” Gibbs said.

Akerson, 61, who lives in McLean, Va., is a partner at Carlyle Group overseeing its investments in many companies and has been a CEO three times. He’s also a Republican who donated to Sen. John McCain’s campaign against Obama.

Gibbs said GM — with its $50 billion bailout — needed fundamental management changes. Akerson will be the fourth CEO in less than 18 months — and the latest former telecom executive with no experience in autos.

“The money that we invested came with managerial changes that had to be enacted. I think Ed Whitacre and I think Dan Akerson understand that GM made a series of decisions that got them into a position, with the type of economic downturn that we’ve had, that, quite frankly, put the existence of the company in great danger,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs said GM got a second chance on life.

“There’s an understanding that (GM has) a second chance; that that investment required them to do some things differently, and they are, and now there’s a much different story to tell in the auto world, that will only, quite frankly, get better as our economy gets stronger, and more people buy cars,” he said.

General Motors Co. delayed until next week Friday’s planned filing of paperwork for an initial public stock offering, amid scrutiny of the company’s new top boss, The Detroit News reported.

Potential investors are focusing on Daniel Akerson, a GM board member with a financial and telecommunications background, who will replace Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre Jr. His surprise appointment came Thursday.

Akerson’s immediate and huge task will be to line up investors to buy GM stock and convince them he has the skills to run the automaker effectively, even though he is an industry outsider.

IHS Automotive analyst Rebecca Lindland said GM likely needed to delay the filing of federal paperwork for its initial public offering (IPO) of stock to update the document’s outline of GM management.

It “highlights the fact that this (leadership) change is fairly sudden,” she said.

“Eventually, everybody will probably feel good about this change. I don’t know if that has sunk in yet.”

Akerson has his work cut for him to sell the management change to investors, Lindland said, but his rise hasn’t dramatically altered the picture.

“People who weren’t going to buy into the IPO still aren’t going to and people that are confident enough to buy probably haven’t changed their minds,” she said.

Whitacre made no secret of the fact that he didn’t plan to stay at GM for a long time, but Thursday’s announcement that he would step down Sept. 1 was unexpected. Akerson, 61, a managing partner at private equity firm Carlyle Group, had not been mentioned as a candidate to succeed Whitacre, 68.

Analysts said the management change, announced at the end of Thursday’s upbeat second-quarter earnings presentation, seemed designed to reassure potential investors.

Akerson’s strong financial experience will lend him credibility as he prepares to take the lead role in selling GM to potential investors in a “road show” this fall.

At Carlyle, Akerson helped oversee a portfolio of 900 real estate and corporate investments, including such diverse companies as Hertz, Dunkin Donuts, AMC Entertainment, Hawaiian Telecom and Harrah’s Entertainment. He has taken an active role as a member of GM’s board since his appointment by the Treasury Department in 2009.

Dan Akerson, General Motors Co.’s fourth CEO in 18 months, has to convince investors the automaker’s turnaround has staying power, Bloomberg reported.

Announced yesterday to succeed Ed Whitacre on Sept. 1, it’s Akerson who will be the face of the automaker as it embarks on a public stock offering to repay the U.S. Treasury for its $50 billion bailout. He will be selling a company that posted two straight quarters of profit after $88 billion in losses in the four years before it declared bankruptcy 14 months ago.

“He’s got one more good run in him,” said Steven Rattner, who led GM’s reorganization when he ran President Barack Obama’s Automotive Task Force and served on the Ziff-Davis Inc. board with Akerson. “As someone who has lived in the corporate world, this is as exciting an opportunity as there could be.”

The IPO, which may be filed as soon as today, may raise as much as $16 billion, making it the second-largest in U.S. history, said a person familiar with the plans. Akerson got the job after the board and bankers pressed Whitacre, 68, to commit to spending several more years at GM in order to help promote the IPO, three people with direct knowledge of the talks said.

The 61-year-old Akerson, who was born in California and grew up in Minnesota, graduated from the Naval Academy and served on Navy destroyers before working for telecommunications companies.

“He would tell you to this day that the defining experience of his life was the four years he spent at the Naval Academy,” said Todd Wolfenbarger, who worked for Akerson as a spokesman at XO Communications Inc. “He looks at General Motors as something that is deeply embedded in who the country is, and that will always have a huge appeal to Dan.”

Wolfenbarger described Akerson, whom he expects will move from suburban Washington to Detroit, as a family man. He is married with three grown children. He also owns a Cadillac CTS, according to GM.

He spent a decade at MCI Communications Corp., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. He was chairman and CEO of General Instrument Corp., Nextel Communications Inc. and Nextlink Communications Inc., which became XO Communications Inc.

“Dan is a guy who is more a person you would want when you want to change things a lot,” said Craig McCaw, chairman of Eagle River Holdings LLC. “When I wanted to make big changes in the way Nextel worked, I did come to Dan and ask him to do it. And I think he did that.”