DETROIT – After a nearly 27-year career with GMAC Financial Services and its former parent, General Motors, William Muir, president and head of the company’s Global Automotive Services, has announced his intention to retire from GMAC within the next year.

Muir will continue in his current role until a replacement is named. After that time, he will remain with GMAC for a period of time to ensure a smooth and orderly transition period.

“Bill has been a dedicated leader to GMAC for many years and helped the company through a number of key milestones. We are pleased to continue to benefit from his experience during this transition period,” said GMAC CEO Michael A. Carpenter.

Muir said, “I continue to be optimistic about the strategic direction for GMAC and the progress the team is making. I am committed to ensuring a smooth transition for GMAC’s premier Global Automotive Services business before commencing with my retirement within the next year.”

The company has initiated an external search for a candidate to run the Global Automotive Services operation.

DETROIT – GMAC Financial Services today announced that it will provide consumer financing for recreation vehicles and has been selected by Thor Industries as the preferred financial provider for its retail customers.

Thor is the world’s largest manufacturer of recreation vehicles, including brands such as Damon, Four Winds, Airstream, Dutchmen, Komfort, Breckenridge, CrossRoads, General Coach and Keystone RV. GMAC will begin by extending retail financing through Thor dealers in 14 high-volume states, and eventually expand nationwide to all 1,200 dealers that comprise Thor’s U.S. network. The company expects to accept retail financing applications from dealers for both new and used RVs, beginning in May 2010.

“The RV financing market is a natural extension of our auto business,” said GMAC President Bill Muir. “We have the infrastructure and servicing capabilities to add the RV business to our portfolio. Further, many of GMAC’s current and prospective auto customers are interested in using their vehicles to pull towables, so the new relationship with Thor brands makes a lot of sense for both our business and customer base.”

GMAC intends to hire current employees who manage Thor Credit services, including industry veteran Ed Arienti.

“We are pleased to select GMAC as the preferred financing provider for Thor Industries, particularly as we seek to satisfy increased demand for our recreation vehicles with a positive sales and financing experience,” said Thor Chairman and CEO Peter Orthwein. “Thor dealers and their customers will benefit from having GMAC as a retail financing option.”

The U.S. RV market has been growing since mid-2009, and is expected to reach more than 215,000 units in 2010. Thor Industries currently holds 27 percent of U.S. RV market share. “The RV industry represents high-quality business and is currently under-represented by the financial community,” Muir said.

In addition to providing consumer retail financing, GMAC will offer remarketing services to RV dealers for used or traded-in recreation vehicles through its SmartAuction online site.

WASHINGTON – GMAC Financial Services still has no business plan even after receiving a $17.2 billion investment from the government, and the Treasury Department has been lax in making sure that the bank repays taxpayers, a congressional panel said.

According to the panel, Treasury should consider the possibility of breaking up GMAC and merging its auto-finance unit back into General Motors Co., Automotive News reported.

That measure would restore GM’s financing operations to a model used by a number of other automakers, said the panel headed by Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard University law professor.

GMAC lost $8.3 billion on its mortgage business last year, which amounted to more than 80 percent of its total net losses, the panel’s report said.

“We appreciate the panel’s responsibility to analyze history; however, GMAC’s management team is focused on the future,” GMAC said in a statement. “That includes continuing to provide the highest level of service to auto dealers and consumers in support of our auto partners, returning GMAC to a high level of profitability, and repaying the U.S. Treasury.”

Treasury, in a statement released this afternoon, said, “Treasury continues to be a reluctant shareholder and to manage its investment in GMAC in a hands-off commercial manner consistent with the administration’s established principles that guide Treasury’s management of financial interests in private firms.”

As for its past decisions not to restructure GMAC, the federal agency said, “After considerable analysis and deliberation, Treasury viewed the course taken as the least costly and least disruptive of all the options available.”

The congressional panel found that the government missed chances to increase accountability and ensure repayment of taxpayers’ money with its early decisions to rescue GMAC rather than pursue other options as part of a broader auto industry bailout.

Treasury has said that it was necessary to support GMAC because of the company’s dominant role in floorplan financing and that failure to do so would have undermined the government’s investments in the auto industry.

In 2006, GM spun its credit arm off into a company that today is the 14th largest bank holding company in the United States.

NEW YORK – The CFO of GMAC Financial Services is leaving the auto lender to join a private-equity firm, Reuters reported.

Robert Hull will join Providence Equity Partners in April as chief financial officer. Before arriving at GMAC in 2007, he was CFO of Bank of America Corp.’s global wealth and investment management business, Providence Equity said in a statement.

GMAC said Hull, 46, will leave at the end of the month. The former General Motors finance arm will search internally and externally for a replacement, according to a U.S. regulatory filing.

The lender has been kept afloat with government support and is now 56 percent owned by the U.S. Treasury. Cerberus Capital Management LP owns 14.9 percent; third party investors own 12.2 percent; an independent trustee for GM owns 9.9 percent; and a GM affiliate owns 6.7 percent.

DETROIT – GMAC Financial Services has completed the sale of its U.S. consumer property and casualty insurance business to American Capital Acquisition Corporation.

The operations included its U.S automobile, commercial vehicle, motorcycle and recreational vehicle insurance offerings.

This transaction is part of GMAC’s effort to refocus resources on strategic operations and restore financial performance. The dealer-related insurance business, which includes extended service contracts and insurance for auto dealer inventories, is not affected by this transaction and remains a strategic component of GMAC’s automotive services platform.

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department plans to exit its investment in GMAC Financial Services by slowly selling off its majority stake in the finance company, but likely not until 2011, The Detroit News reported.

The disclosure came as two financial analysts suggested that the best route for the Detroit company may be a bankruptcy filing, with GMAC’s former parent — General Motors Co. — buying back the auto financing portion of GMAC’s business.

“The question about whether or not the best thing for GM and for the automotive industry is to have an independent GMAC seems to be highly questionable,” Elizabeth Warren, chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing the $700 billion Wall Street and auto bailout fund, said Thursday after a hearing before the panel.

The oversight panel, which criticized the government’s three rounds of bailouts for GMAC, totaling $17.2 billion, plans to release a report next month on its recommendations for the company’s future.

The Treasury now owns a 56.3 percent majority stake in the lender. The agency’s top auto advisor, Ron Bloom, and chief restructuring officer, Jim Millstein, said in testimony at the Thursday’s hearing that Treasury will “likely exit its investment in GMAC through a gradual sale of shares following a public offering.”

Millstein told the panel that an initial public offering for GMAC isn’t likely until 2011; GMAC CEO Michael Carpenter said an offering “could be possible over the next two years.”

Carpenter said GMAC is not likely to receive more taxpayer funds and there is a “high likelihood” the government will be repaid in full.

Warren said the government’s three bailouts of GMAC — in December 2008, May 2009 and December 2009 — “require special scrutiny.”

“On each occasion, Treasury had a choice to make on behalf of taxpayers,” Warren said.

GMAC is the nation’s 14th largest bank and has 19,000 employees. It services $60 billion in consumer auto loans for over 4 million customers, and 3 million residential mortgage loans through its Residential Capital unit, known as ResCap.

GMAC provided $18 billion in new auto loans last year, including 30.3 percent of loans for GM sales in the fourth quarter.

Carpenter, a board member who became CEO last November, noted that GMAC finances 91 percent of GM dealers and 77 percent of Chrysler dealers.

Without government funding, “numerous GM and Chrysler dealers would not have survived, and thousands of consumers would not have been able to buy GM or Chrysler vehicles,” Carpenter said.

He noted that GMAC has made $1 billion in dividend payments to the Treasury Department “and plans to repay the U.S. government in full over the next several years.”

Carpenter said ResCap is a “problem to be solved, not an opportunity.” He added that GMAC wants to be “freed from that burden” over time, and is exploring strategic alternatives for the unit.

GMAC has retained two Wall Street securities firms to advise it on what to do with ResCap. The company hopes to make decisions in the next few months, Carpenter said.