DETROIT – James McDonald, who was president of General Motors under CEO Roger Smith in the 1980s, died Sunday. He was 87.

McDonald became president and COO on Feb. 1, 1981, a month after Smith took over as GM’s chief executive, reported Automotive News.

McDonald helped steer GM as it rebounded from recession at the start of the decade while confronting stiffening competition from overseas. The company diversified, reorganized, overhauled factories and sought new ways of winning back U.S. market share.

With Smith, McDonald announced the creation of Saturn, the small-car company designed to beat Japanese imports, in 1983.

In a 1987 story marking McDonald’s retirement at age 65, Automotive News called McDonald’s quest for quality a “long, hard and often disappointing struggle.” Some colleagues, the article said, “say McDonald’s compassion for plant workers caused GM to postpone too long the closing of several assembly and component plants.”

A year earlier, Ford Motor Co. had outearned GM for the first time since 1924, amid growing signs that Smith’s overhaul was failing.

McDonald was quoted as saying that the rewards were yet to come.

“We could have eliminated a lot of investment and not reorganized and looked better right now,” he said. “But I don’t think the corporation would have existed until 1990 or existed very well.”

McDonald’s successor as president, Robert Stempel, would take over for Smith as CEO in 1990 only to be ousted by GM’s board less than two years later.

GM’s market share in its home market fell to 38.9 percent in the year of McDonald’s retirement, from 44.5 percent in 1980. Last year, after its U.S. rescue and bankruptcy, GM held a 19.9 percent share.

Earlier in his career, McDonald succeeded John DeLorean twice: as general manager of Pontiac in 1969 and Chevrolet in 1972.

WASHINGTON – A top U.S. lawmaker and GM seem to be at odds over whether an Ohio dealer has been reinstated, reported Automotive News.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Friday had been told by “a high-ranking GM official” that Rose Chevrolet of Hamilton, Ohio, had prevailed in arbitration, a spokesman said. Today, Boehner wanted to know why General Motors Co. hadn’t yet informed the dealer.

GM declined to say if the dealership has been reinstated. GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney in an email today wondered who at GM might have spoken with Boehner.

For now, confusion prevails.

“There are some questions GM needs to answer,” Boehner’s spokesman, Cory Fritz, said in a phone interview today. “Why would they let us know without letting the dealer know? It doesn’t make sense to us.”

Boehner was contacted Friday, June 11, by a GM official, said Fritz, who declined to name the source.

Said GM’s Carney in an e-mail: “Not sure whom Congressman Boehner is referring to from GM.” Carney declined further comment.

Boehner’s statement on Friday read: “Today’s news is all that Rose Chevrolet asked for: a fair decision based on their record as one of the best dealerships in southwest Ohio.”

Boehner since learned from the dealership that it had received no such call from GM, Fritz said.

Still, Boehner isn’t backing off from his formal statement.

“The facts in our mind are no different from what we heard on Friday,” Fritz said.

Boehner, whose district includes Hamilton, near Cincinnati, had written a letter to GM a year ago requesting that Rose Chevrolet be reinstated.

The dealership had been told last June that it was being wound down and would be closed by October 2010.

Rose Chevrolet, owned by Ed Larkin, confirmed today that it has not yet heard either from GM or the arbitrator about the outcome.

“We’re all sitting on pins and needles,” said Rose Chevrolet sales manager Mark Frauenknecht.

Rose Chevrolet had its arbitration hearing in Cleveland from Tuesday June 8 to Thursday June 10, he said.

The dealership didn’t expect an arbitration decision until next week, Frauenknecht said.

Ed Whitacre has General Motors Co. in better shape now than it’s been in years, but pushing ahead with an initial public offering this year may be tougher to manage, Bloomberg reported.

Bonds that convert into GM shares fell at the end of last week to their lowest level since Feb. 26. GM, which earned $865 million in the first quarter, is still losing money at its European unit. Chief Executive Officer Whitacre has less than four months to meet a goal of setting up a lending division. The IPO market has stumbled, with 32 deals pulled since April.

Whitacre has said he’d like to begin selling shares as soon as possible. The former AT&T Inc. chairman will need to balance his natural inclination to seek a big IPO against the need to make it successful for the government, which owns 61 percent of the automaker, said James Kahan, a former AT&T executive.

The Obama administration needs GM to go public to reduce its 61 percent stake and harvest returns on its $50 billion investment. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are expected to lead the initial sale, people familiar with the matter said last week, and a June selection means Detroit-based GM may be able to sell shares in the fourth quarter.

Selim Bingol, a GM spokesman, declined to comment.

DETROIT – General Motors Co. is disclosing that seven executives will get roughly $7.5 million in company stock as part of their pay packages, The Associated Press reported.

The executives include North American President Mark Reuss, Vice Chairman for Product Development Tom Stephens and President of GM Europe Nick Reilly, the company said in regulatory filings Monday.

Previously GM had only disclosed a $9 million pay-and-stock deal for CEO Ed Whitacre, $6.2 million for Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell and $5 million for Vice Chairman for Corporate Strategy Stephen Girsky.

GM officials have said the company could sell stock to the public late this year. No date has been set.

The U.S. government owns 61 percent of GM because it gave the company roughly $50 billion in aid. GM has repaid $6.7 billion, with the rest converted to stock.

DETROIT – General Motors Co. CEO Ed Whitacre intends to announce on Wednesday that GM has repaid the remaining $5.8 billion in loans from the United States and Canada, a person with direct knowledge of the plans told Bloomberg.

Whitacre will be at GM’s Fairfax, Kan., assembly plant to disclose the payments, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the details are still private. The U.S. is owed $4.7 billion, and the total is $1.1 billion for the governments of Ontario and Canada, the person said.

Eliminating the government debt shows Detroit-based GM is moving toward a return to independence, said Mirko Mikelic, senior portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Grand Rapids, Mich. The U.S. owns a 61 percent stake after GM received about $50 billion in aid tied to its 2009 bankruptcy.

“It’s a big step,” Mikelic said. “I don’t think it’s the be-all, end-all of their turnaround. But it’s a step forward, and you can’t deny that they’re in better shape if they’re able to repay that debt.”

GM received $8.4 billion in loans as part of its government assistance, with the rest in equity. Whitacre, 68, said in December he was starting to pay down the loans and said he would complete the task by the end of June. A GM spokesman, Tom Wilkinson, declined to comment.

GM’s payment plan adds to evidence that the auto industry is recovering from the slump in 2009 that dragged U.S. sales to their lowest since 1982. On April 1, GM posted a 21 percent gain in March domestic deliveries, the third increase in a row over a year earlier. U.S. industrywide sales rose for a fifth month.

DETROIT — General Motors Co. incurred a $4.3 billion loss in the second half of 2009 as the company grappled with weak U.S. sales and began to repay government loans, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Despite the loss, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said GM still stands a good chance of being profitable in 2010 by improving sales performance and further reducing costs.

“We need to make significant progress is several key areas,” he said. “I don’t want to sit here and predict profitability and disappoint. But there is nothing I’ve seen in the first quarter that changes my opinion that we could be profitable.”

The results posted Wednesday come as GM disclosed the first official accounting of its balance sheet since the company emerged from bankruptcy protection in July. They aren’t comparable with prior years.

They include a $3.4 billion fourth-quarter loss and a $900 million loss for July 10 through September. GM previously said it incurred a loss of $1.2 billion in that period. GM had $136 billion in assets at the end of 2009. The former GM had $91 billion in assets at the end of 2008. The company used $1.9 billion in cash on operating activities in the fourth quarter.

The figures underline the challenge a shrunken-down GM faces in bolstering revenue after shedding brands, models and dealers. GM’s global revenue was $32.3 billion in the fourth quarter; a year earlier so-called Old GM had $30.8 billion in revenue.

Liddell said GM will continue to bolster production and look for ways to reduce overhead costs. Obligations shed through bankruptcy have dramatically lowered GM’s break-even point, though Liddell wouldn’t disclose what that new level is.

The figures are based on fresh-start accounting standards that apply to the company after its exit from Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, which required GM to adjust debts and assets of its global operations to reflect their fair-market value.

Before GM can hold a public stock offering to pay off the U.S. government’s $50 billion investment in the company, it needs a balance sheet that adheres to federal accounting standards.