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(12/01/09 10:23pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>DETROIT - General Motors’ CEO Frederick “Fritz” Henderson has resigned after eight turbulent months as head of the largest U.S. automaker. The company said Tuesday that Chairman Ed Whitacre Jr. will serve as interim CEO. The company plans an international search for a new president and chief executive.At a press conference, Whitacre read a brief statement thanking Henderson for his work during a period of challenge and change.Henderson, 51, succeeded Rick Wagoner on March 29 after the Obama administration ousted GM’s former CEO as the company worked through a government-led reorganization.Henderson spent the next few months working with the government to reorganize the automaker outside of bankruptcy, but eventually took the company into Chapter 11 protection in June.With the government’s help, the company emerged from court protection in just 40 days cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans.Henderson continued to downsize the automaker after its emergence from bankruptcy. He sought to scale down GM to just four core brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC.While he has largely succeeded in that goal, attempts to sell the company’s other brands have hit obstacles.The company is winding down Pontiac and was successful in winning a tentative sale of Hummer to a Chinese construction machinery maker.However, Henderson’s bid to sell Saturn to race car mogul Roger Penske fell through and the brand is now liquidating. Last week, Swedish sports car maker Koenigsegg Automotive AB dropped out of a deal to buy Saab.
(11/16/09 3:26pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>DETROIT — General Motors Co. says it lost $1.2 billion from the time it left bankruptcy protection through Sept. 30, far better than it has reported in previous quarters and a sign that the auto giant is starting to turn around its business.The company also says it will begin repaying $6.7 billion in U.S. government loans with a $1.2 billion payment in December. It could pay off the full amount by 2010, five years ahead of schedule, but the money will come from funds loaned by the government.GM said its improved performance was fueled by new products including the Chevrolet Camaro muscle car, and the Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain midsize crossover vehicles. The company's top sellers through October were the Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck and Impala full-size car.The better showing also reflected lower debt payments. The automaker paid $250 million in interest for the latest period, far lower than in previous quarters when the company was weighed down by a huge debt of almost $95 billion that has since been cut by more than 80 percent.Also, GM's global presence helped the company, particularly in China, where its sales of 478,000 in the third quarter increased 6 percent over the second quarter."We have significantly more work to do, but today's results provide evidence of the solid foundation we are building for the new GM," CEO Fritz Henderson said in a statement.The company cautioned that the earnings numbers mean little because they don't comply with U.S. accounting standards and cover only the part of the quarter after GM left Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 10.Even more unusual is the $79.4 billion profit the troubled automaker is reporting for the first nine days of the third quarter, when it remained under bankruptcy court protection but was able to scrap colossal amounts of debt and other obligations from its balance sheet."Direct comparisons are not necessarily applicable," said Chief Financial Officer Ray Young. "You can make some judgments in terms of trends," Young said.Nonetheless, GM maintains the numbers show a company making progress, riding dramatically reduced structural costs to a far better performance than the $6 billion loss GM reported in the first quarter, the last full quarter for which its numbers met accounting standards.GM took in $3.3 billion more cash than it spent for the third quarter, far better than the $10 billion the company burned through during the first quarter.Its third-quarter revenue totaled $26.4 billion, also an improvement over the first quarter when it saw revenue drop nearly 50 percent from the same period in 2008 to $22.4 billion. Revenue was aided by sales boosts in July and August from the U.S. government's Cash for Clunkers rebates.GM said its global market share was 11.9 percent in the third quarter, up three percentage points from the first half of the year. The U.S. share stayed flat for the quarter at 19.5 percent.Many customers stayed away from GM showrooms in the first and second quarters as it headed into bankruptcy protection, fearing the company wouldn't be around to honor warranties and service their vehicles.Young said GM accountants are in the process of cleaning up the new company's books, revaluing assets and liabilities and changes to pension and health care costs that came from bankruptcy and a new contract with the United Auto Workers union.GM expects to meet accounting standards when it reports full-year results for fiscal 2009, but those figures probably won't be released until March as accountants go through the complex process of figuring out just how much the company is now worth.But Young said the third-quarter results still are useful to management in spotting trends and measuring whether the company is making progress.GM lost $78 billion from 2006 through the first quarter of this year. The gargantuan losses and debt eventually choked the company to the point where it could no longer operate without government help.GM entered bankruptcy protection with roughly $94.7 billion in debt. It emerged with $17 billion, including the $6.7 billion owed to the U.S. government. The government has given GM a total of $52 billion, including $45.3 billion in exchange for a 61 percent equity stake in the company.Young said the government placed $16.4 billion of GM's loan money into a contingency fund in case sales worsened or other problems cropped up. Now, GM doesn't need the contingency money and can repay it to the government, he said.But Henderson said GM felt it was prudent not to repay the whole amount in December, in case conditions change.The automaker also says it will begin repaying $1.4 billion it owes to the Canadian and Ontario governments in December. The loan repayments will come from escrow accounts set up for the company by the U.S. Treasury Department and Canadian governments. GM also has paid $700 million on a $1.3 billion loan from the German government to keep GM's Opel division in operation. The balance will be repaid this month, GM said.Henderson said a "reasonably large" part of the Opel repayment came from GM's U.S.-generated funds, while some came from Opel funds, but Henderson said GM is a global company and needs to have flexibility to use the money to run global operations.The CEO disagreed with a report by the General Accounting Office saying that it was doubtful the U.S. government would recoup all of the money given to GM. He said full repayment is a function of stock value, and he intends to make the stock valuable by managing the company well."It is my mission to disprove the GAO," Henderson said.Young would not detail how much GM paid in interest per quarter before it entered bankruptcy for comparison to the $250 million in interest paid in the latest period, but he said significantly reduced interest payments helped its third-quarter peformance.Although the company reported positive cash flow for the third quarter, it does not expect that to continue into the fourth quarter because of the government loan repayments and a $2.8 billion payment to help Delphi Corp., its former parts division, out of bankruptcy protection.GM has said it plans to sell stock to the public late next year so taxpayers can recoup at least part of their remaining investment, though GM Chairman Ed Whitacre said last week the timing of any GM IPO remains uncertain and depends on when the company returns to profitability.
(04/20/09 8:54pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>DETROIT – About 1,600 white-collar workers at General Motors Corp. will lose their jobs in the next few days as the troubled automaker accelerates cost cuts in order to qualify for more government aid.GM North America President Troy Clarke said Monday in an e-mail to employees that the layoffs are needed to ensure the company’s long-term viability.“In these unprecedented times, GM is reinventing every aspect of our business, including our organizational size and structure, to create a lean and agile company,” Clarke wrote in the e-mail obtained by The Associated Press.Clarke said the next week will be “a very trying time for the entire GM team, but especially for those employees directly impacted by these actions.”GM is living on $13.4 billion in government loans. The automaker faces a June 1 deadline to cut costs and gain concessions from stakeholders in order to get more government help.Last month GM began cutting 3,400 U.S. salaried jobs as part of the 47,000 job cuts that it will make worldwide by year’s end. Some of the positions will be cut through normal attrition, but most will be through involuntary layoff.Hardest hit will be the Detroit metropolitan area, especially at GM’s downtown headquarters and its sprawling technical center in suburban Warren, Mich. where the company does much of its engineering and design work.The company will be close to its 3,400 goal after the 1,600 layoffs, spokesman Tom Wilkinson said.The cuts may go even deeper as GM moves toward the government-imposed deadline. CEO Fritz Henderson said Friday that the company will close more factories beyond the five announced in February. Factories to be closed have not yet been identified.“There is no question, as we look at our revised plan to go deeper and go faster in our operational restructuring, there will be further reductions in manpower, people, that are going to affect communities, affect plants and people, both on hourly and the salaried side of the business,” Henderson told reporters.Clarke’s e-mail said GM will provide laid-off workers with resources and support through the process.Wilkinson said workers would get severance pay of about two weeks for every year of service, up to six months. The packages include base pay and the company’s share of health care and other benefits, he said. The company will provide services to help them find other jobs for up to three months, he said.GM must cut costs and win concessions from bondholders and its unions in order to get more government aid. The government’s auto task force has said the company must persuade the holders of $28 billion in GM bonds to take stock in exchange for part of the debt.Unions in the United States and Canada must agree to concessions, too. For GM to qualify for more help, the United Auto Workers must agree to take stock for part of the roughly $20 billion that GM must pay into a union-run trust that will take over retiree health care costs starting next year.If it doesn’t restructure enough by the deadline, Detroit-based GM could be forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the government providing financing. The government advocates a short “surgical” bankruptcy to cancel debt, change union contracts and separate underperforming units from the company.Henderson said Friday that the company still would prefer to restructure out of court as it tries to prove it can survive to repay the government, but he conceded that bankruptcy protection is more likely than it was in the past.Chrysler LLC faces an earlier deadline of April 30 to gain similar concessions and finalize an alliance with Italy’s Fiat Group SpA. Fiat and Chrysler are discussing a deal that would give Fiat a 20 percent stake in the Auburn Hills, Mich.-based automaker in exchange for Fiat’s small-car technology.Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said that as deadlines for Chrysler and GM loom, all parties involved are making a “serious effort” to find a solution.“But that doesn’t take away the pain people feel when they get a pink slip and are shown the door,” she said Monday at an automotive engineering conference in Detroit. “I want to see that there’s a commitment to community and people affected by the shift in focus and dynamics.”
(02/26/09 2:43pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>DETROIT — General Motors Corp. posted a $9.6 billion fourth-quarter loss and said it burned through $6.2 billion of cash in the last three months of 2008 as it fought the worst U.S. auto sales climate since 1982 and sought government loans to keep the century-old company running.The nation's biggest domestic automaker said Thursday it lost $30.9 billion for the full year and expects to state in its upcoming annual report whether its auditors believe the company remains a "going concern." GM and its auditors must determine whether there is substantial doubt about the automaker's ability to continue it operations.Chief Financial Officer Ray Young said the determination will depend a lot on whether GM gets further government loans and whether it can accomplish its restructuring goals.Young said that auditors are studying the future of the company because "there's uncertainty with how the Treasury will view our viability plan," and "uncertainty on whether we're going to be able to execute the terms of our loan agreement."The company has received $13.4 billion in federal loans since Dec. 31 and says it needs up to $30 billion to stay out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Top GM executives were in Washington, D.C., Thursday to meet with the Obama administration's auto task force to talk about restructuring and additional loans."2008 was an extremely difficult year for the U.S. and global auto markets, especially the second half," Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said in a statement. "These conditions created a very challenging environment for GM and other automakers and led us to take further aggressive and difficult measures to restructure our business."Young said GM would reduce its structural costs by another $4.5 billion in 2009, from $30.8 billion to $26.3 billion.GM reported a net loss of $15.71 per share for the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of $722 million, or $1.28 per share in the year-ago period.Quarterly revenue fell 39 percent to $30.8 billion from $46.8 billion, as credit availability froze across the globe, and a lack of consumer confidence and fears of job losses kept people from buying vehicles.GM's fourth-quarter loss included $3.7 billion in special items, including a $1.1 billion charge for a drop in value of machinery for the Hummer and Saab brands, which are up for sale. Other charges included $900 million for restructuring, including worker buyout and early retirement payments, and $660 million to increase reserves for former parts arm Delphi Corp.'s future pension obligations.The charges were offset by a $533 million net gain from a bond exchange at GM's financial arm, GMAC Financial Services.Excluding special items, GM's fourth-quarter adjusted loss was $5.9 billion, or $9.65 per share.That was worse than Wall Street expected. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters predicted a quarterly loss of $7.40 per share on sales of $35.1 billion.For the full year, GM's net loss was $53.32 per share, the second-worst annual result in the company's history. The worst loss occurred in 2007, when the Detroit-based company lost $38.7 billion, or $68.45 per share, in 2007, due largely to charges for unused tax credits.GM's cash burn rate, the difference between how much it takes in and how much it spends, narrowed slightly from $6.9 billion in the third quarter, reflecting GM's restructuring efforts.The company last year announced the closure of four assembly plants and a parts stamping factory.Last week, a plan GM submitted to the Treasury Department to justify more loans said the company would close five more U.S. factories and cut another 47,000 jobs globally. GM also reached a tentative deal with the United Auto Workers on concessions that will reduce labor costs.Since 2000, GM's U.S. salaried work force has shrunk by 33 percent from its 2000 high of 44,000 people. At the same time, the number of hourly workers has plunged by more than half — to about 63,700 people at the end of last year from 133,000 in 2000.GM ended last year with about $14 billion in cash, $10.5 billion less that the $24.5 billion it had at the end of 2007. The 2008 figure is close to the minimum amount of cash GM has said it needs to fund its operations.Young said GM's total debt at the end of 2008, including the $4 billion in government loans it received Dec. 31, was $45.3 billion. The company has been negotiating with bondholders to convert most of that debt to equity, which is a requirement of the government's loan terms.Young told reporters the credit crisis spread from the U.S. to other markets, making the fourth-quarter a challenging one.But there was some hope, he said. While global sales fell, some emerging markets, such as China, are off to a good start in 2009."A lot of the governments in these countries are putting a lot of stimulus into the economy as well as the automotive market," he said, citing lower sales tax rates on cars sold in China and Brazil.GM shares fell 19 cents, or 7.5 percent, to $2.36 in premarket activity.
(01/08/08 3:54pm)
DETROIT– Cars that drive themselves – even parking at their destination – could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say.\nGM parts suppliers, university engineers and other auto makers all are working on vehicles that could revolutionize short- and long-distance travel. And GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner will devote part of his speech today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to the driverless vehicles.\n“This is not science fiction,” Larry Burns, GM’s vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview.\nThe most significant obstacles facing the vehicles could be human rather than technical: government regulation, liability laws, privacy concerns and people’s passion for the automobile and the control it gives them.\nMuch of the technology already exists for vehicles to take the wheel: radar-based cruise control, motion sensors, lane-change warning devices, electronic stability control and satellite-based digital mapping. And automated vehicles could dramatically improve life on the road, reducing crashes and congestion.\nIf people are interested.\n“Now the question is what does society want to do with it?” Burns said. “You’re looking at these issues of congestion, safety, energy and emissions. Technically there should be no reason why we can’t transfer to a totally different world.”\nGM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said.\nHe said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018.\nSebastian Thrun, co-leader of the Stanford University team that finished second among six teams completing a 60-mile Pentagon-sponsored race of driverless cars in November, said GM’s goal is technically attainable. But he said he wasn’t confident cars would appear in showrooms within a decade.\n“There’s some very fundamental, basic regulations in the way of that vision in many countries,” said Thrun, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering.\nThrun said a key benefit of the technology eventually will be safer roads and reducing the roughly 42,000 U.S. traffic deaths that occur annually – 95 percent of which he said are caused by human mistakes.\n“We might be able to cut those numbers down by a factor of 50 percent,” Thrun said. “Just imagine all the funerals that won’t take place.”\nOther challenges include updating vehicle codes and figuring out who would be liable in a crash and how to cope with blown tires or obstacles in the road. But the systems could be developed to tell motorists about road conditions, warn of crashes or stopped vehicles ahead and prevent collisions in intersections.\n“Where it shakes out remains to be seen but there is no question we see a lot of potential there,” said Rae Tyson, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
(10/09/07 2:03am)
DETROIT – The United Auto Workers has set a deadline of 11 a.m. Wednesday to agree on a new contract with Chrysler LLC or workers could strike.\nThe deadline, confirmed Monday morning by Chrysler spokeswoman Michele Tinson, gives negotiators less than 48 hours until a strike could be called.\nBargainers returned to the table Monday morning after spending most of the weekend in negotiations.\nJust because a deadline has been set doesn’t mean a strike will happen, Tinson said. The union also could extend the contract hour-by-hour as negotiations continue, she said.\nUAW spokesman Roger Kerson would not comment Monday on the possibility of a strike.\nProgress was reported in weekend bargaining, but a person who had been briefed on the talks said that much work needed to be done on difficult issues. The person asked not to be identified because the talks are private.\nThe UAW represents about 49,000 hourly workers at Chrysler, making it the smallest of the three major domestic automakers.\nJerry Fogarty, 47, who works at a Chrysler engine plant in Trenton, south of Detroit, said he had not been told of the strike deadline as of Monday afternoon.\nHe would prefer not to walk off the job, but said he would if it was necessary to get the company to bargain.\n“I just wish that everybody could get along,” he said. “I am not one for slacking like that. I’d feel much better working.”\nA strike notice could be a tactic by the union to put pressure on the company as the talks intensify, said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in labor issues.\n“The union wants the deadline to encourage a settlement sooner rather than later,” Shaiken said. “I think the union may feel things are going well, but they want the discipline of a deadline,” Shaiken said.\nThe UAW went on strike for nearly two days last month before coming to a tentative agreement with General Motors Corp. GM workers are expected to wrap up voting on the tentative agreement by Wednesday.\nThe union normally settles with one U.S. automaker and then uses that deal as a pattern for an agreement with the other two. But this year, both Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. have said they have different needs than GM and may need different contract terms.\nA second strike in one set of negotiations would be rare, Shaiken said.\nThe last time the UAW struck two companies during the same set of negotiations was in 1976, according to Chrysler’s fact book on the bargaining. The union walked out of Ford plants for 28 days in September and October, and for 12 hours at 16 key GM locations.\nA short strike might not hurt Chrysler much. Five U.S. plants were scheduled to be shut down during the next two weeks due to lower market demand for their products. The shutdowns were expected to last one or two weeks.\nThe UAW’s contracts with Chrysler, Ford and GM were originally set to expire Sept. 14. The UAW chose GM as the lead company and strike target and tentatively agreed to a contract on Sept. 26.\nChrysler has become a private company, which could be a factor in the talks. Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP bought a majority share of Chrysler in August from DaimlerChrysler AG. As a private company, Chrysler no longer has shares and isn’t required to file earnings reports.\nChrysler pays its workers an average of $75.86 per hour in wages, pension and health care costs, the highest among the Detroit automakers.\nIn addition to the 49,000 active workers, the company also has about 78,000 hourly retirees and surviving spouses.
(10/02/07 3:23am)
DETROIT – General Motors Corp. could close or sell a stamping plant in Indianapolis under a tentative contract agreement reached last week with the United Auto Workers, according to a detailed copy of the agreement. But the local union leader in Indianapolis said he has received assurances from a top UAW official that the plant would remain open.\nThe move is the downside of job security pledges that the UAW won in the negotiations, including commitments for new products at 16 plants. \nAbout 74,000 hourly GM workers will vote on the pact starting this week, with a final tally to be done by Oct. 10.\nGregg Shotwell, a GM worker and frequent critic of the UAW, posted most of the contract details on the Internet. \nHe said he received the agreement from a local union official who attended a meeting Friday in Detroit. He would not identify the official, but the accuracy of its contents was confirmed for The Associated Press by a union leader who requested anonymity because members have not yet voted on the pact.\nAccording to the detailed document, called the “white book,” work at the Indianapolis stamping operation will continue or be reallocated to another GM plant “until such time as the plant can be sold to an outside buyer.”\nGM will study keeping the plant, but if it is not sold or kept, it will be closed “no sooner than December 2011,” the document said. \nIt employs about 850 workers, according to a GM Web site.\nDarnell Dawson, president of UAW Local 23 at the plant, said Monday that he received assurances on Friday from UAW Vice President Cal Rapson that the factory would not be closed.\n“It’s not saying to me that they were closing. I don’t very well think the vice president of the UAW would have expressed specifically to me that Indianapolis was not closing,” Dawson said.\nHe said a contract summary states that GM and the UAW would study future products for the plant in an effort to preserve jobs, and that the plant is not listed in the summary as among those slated \nfor closure.\nMessages seeking comment were left for UAW spokesman Roger Kerson. GM spokeswoman Katie McBride would not comment on \nthe agreement.
(02/15/07 4:08am)
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- In the next three years, 13,000 Chrysler workers will lose their jobs under a wrenching restructuring announced Wednesday that eventually may lead to a DaimlerChrysler divorce.\nThe Chrysler unit of the German-American automaker announced its long-awaited plan at its Auburn Hills headquarters, saying it would cut 16 percent of the U.S. division's worldwide work force, a move it hoped would return its U.S. operations to profitability next year.\nThe plan was announced only hours after Chrysler's parent, DaimlerChrysler AG, said it was considering "far-reaching strategic options with partners" for Chrysler and that "no option is being excluded" as it reported a 40 percent drop in companywide profit for the fourth quarter. DaimlerChrysler's U.S. shares rose nearly 7 percent by early afternoon.\nThe plan calls for closing the company's assembly plant in Newark, Del., and reducing shifts at plants in St. Louis and Warren, Mich. A parts-distribution center near Cleveland also will be closed, and reductions could occur at other plants that make components for those factories.\nUnder the plan, 11,000 production workers -- 9,000 in the U.S. and 2,000 in Canada -- will lose their jobs over the next three years, and 2,000 salaried jobs also will be cut _ 1,000 this year and 1,000 in 2008.\n"Today's action by DaimlerChrysler is devastating news for thousands of workers, their families and their communities," United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger and Vice President General Holiefield said in a joint statement. "While Chrysler Group's recent losses are not the fault of UAW members, they will suffer because of the reductions announced today."\nThe job losses are the latest in a yearlong series of devastating cuts in the ailing domestic auto industry, which likely will lose more than 100,000 jobs in all.\n"We believe that this represents a solid plan to return to profitability and lay the groundwork for a solid future," Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda said at a news conference.\nDaimlerChrysler Chairman Dieter Zetsche said the company was looking into "further strategic options with partners" for Chrysler, but he would not give details about what has been discussed for the ailing U.S. operation.\n"In this regard we do not exclude any option in order to find the best solution for both the Chrysler Group and DaimlerChrysler," Zetsche said.\nAnalyst Georg Stuerzer with UniCredit, when asked if the wording in the statement was a sign that the company was mulling a spinoff of Chrysler, said, "the impression was right. This is what people are thinking it could mean"
(10/24/06 2:20am)
It was the largest quarterly loss in more than 14 years for the nation's second biggest auto maker, and company officials predicted things would get worse in the fourth quarter as market share drops and Ford pays for further plant closures and restructuring costs.\nThe July-September performance brings Ford's losses to $7.24 billion for the first nine months of the year.\nFord's new chief executive, Alan Mulally, called the latest results unacceptable but said he was encouraged by Ford's progress in turning itself around by emphasizing more fuel-efficient vehicles.\n"Let's make it clear. These results are unacceptable. We know where we are with our business and why we're where we are," he said in a conference call with reporters and industry analysts.\nHe said there's a clear opportunity to return to profitability by building more vehicles that will sell across the globe, increasing productivity and quality, improving collaboration with parts suppliers and unions and accelerating efforts to reduce plant capacity to match lower consumer demand for Ford products.\nThe company has previously said it would return to profitability in North America sometime in 2009.\nFord also said it plans to restate its earnings for 2001 due to accounting errors involving derivative transactions in its credit company. The restatement is expected to affect financial results from 2001 until the third quarter of this year. Derivatives are manufactured financial instruments based on movements in prices of stocks or other securities and are used to help holders avoid big losses.\nThe company expected the restatement would improve results for 2002 but said other periods are under study.\nFord's net loss of $3.08 per share in the third quarter was larger than last year's third-quarter loss of $284 million, or 15 cents per share.\nRevenue fell 10 percent to $36.7 billion from the same period a year ago.\nExcluding restructuring costs, the company said it lost $1.2 billion, or 62 cents per share, from continuing operations. Excluding special items in the third quarter of last year, Ford lost $191 million, or 10 cents per share.\nWall Street had been expecting a loss of 61 cents per share before one-time items for the quarter, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Financial.\nFord shares fell 13 cents to $7.88 in late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, where they have traded in a 52-week range of $6.06 to $9.48.\nMulally, a former Boeing Co. executive, took over earlier this month as Ford CEO from Chairman Bill Ford, who is part of the auto maker's founding family.\nDearborn-based Ford's turnaround plan aims to cut $5 billion in costs by the end of 2008 by slashing 10,000 white-collar workers and offering buyouts to all of its 75,000 unionized employees.\nThe loss including restructuring costs was Ford's largest quarterly loss since the first quarter of 1992, when the company lost $6.7 billion due mainly to accounting changes.\nExcluding charges, Ford would have lost $2 billion on its North American automotive operations in the latest quarter.
(03/20/06 5:27am)
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- It was 9:30 on a Saturday night, and Carol Jantsch was at an ultimate frisbee tournament when her cell phone rang with an audition invitation from the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of America's finest symphonies.\nAlmost one year later, after beating out 195 other musicians during an arduous tryout process, the 21-year-old University of Michigan senior is the first woman -- and perhaps the youngest person ever -- to earn a tuba seat with a top-five U.S. symphony.\n"This is no surprise for us," said Michael Haithcock, Michigan's director of bands. "Over four years, we've just been accustomed to Carol's depth of talent."\nThe soft-spoken Jantsch, daughter of an emergency-room physician and a vocal-music instructor, said her parents unwittingly started her tuba career when they forced her to take piano lessons at age 6.It didn't take long for her mother, Nancy, who teaches at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, to hear her daughter's talent: "She could make the simplest stuff sound very musical."\nCarol Jantsch became interested in low brass when she was 9 at an arts camp. She picked up a euphonium, the tuba's smaller cousin, and could play it immediately.\n"I always knew I was sort of ahead of the game," Jantsch said.\nShe began playing consistently in elementary school and started to dabble in tuba in seventh grade. When she enrolled at the Interlochen Arts Academy, a boarding high school for talented artists near Traverse City, Mich., she auditioned against two upperclassmen for first chair in the top band.\n"She just wasted them," recalled her instructor, Tom Riccobono.\nInterlochen helped her grow socially, Riccobono said. Instructors marveled at her math skills, and she discovered ultimate frisbee, a game similar to football.\nAlthough she plays an instrument normally reserved for men due to their larger lung capacity, tuba professors say it doesn't matter.\n"You still have to be efficient," said Don Harry, associate professor of tuba at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. "She's the most efficient person, probably on the planet."\nShe won a seat in Michigan's top symphony band, one of only two or three freshmen to do so. Tuba instructor Fritz Kaenzig recalled that in Jantsch's first studio class, she played a difficult sonata from memory.\n"All the graduate students kind of looked at each other and rolled their eyes and said 'Oh, no,'" he said.\nAs a sophomore at Michigan, Jantsch auditioned for the New York Philharmonic, finishing as a semifinalist. She kept looking for jobs, though major orchestra tuba posts open only once every two or three decades. When Philadelphia's opened in 2005, Jantsch applied but was summarily rejected for lack of professional experience.\nHer breakthrough came when she sent a CD to apply for Bar Harbor Brass Week, a summer program for college students in Maine.\nBlair Bollinger, the Philadelphia Orchestra's bass trombone player and chair of its tuba audition committee, is Bar Harbor's music director. He listened to Jantsch's CD, a performance of a difficult violin concerto she had transcribed for tuba.\n"It really was expressive and technically brilliant," Bollinger said. "I was just sort of flabbergasted."\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra granted her an audition. She made the first cut, but no one emerged as a solid favorite in round two. So six musicians, including Jantsch, were asked to fill in for the orchestra's longtime tuba player, who retired last May.\nIn February, the committee called back 25 tubists for final auditions. In the initial rounds, musicians were behind screens so the judges couldn't see them.\nJantsch advanced to the finals, and on Feb. 22 played without a screen against two men with far more orchestra experience, Bollinger said.\n"I was happy with what I did," Jantsch said. "I knew it was representative of my playing. That's all you can really ask for."\nAt 11:30 p.m., the personnel director told all three that Jantsch had won the job, which pays about $102,000 per year.\n"What an awesome feeling," Jantsch said. "It was so great to be daydreaming about something for such a long time and actually have it come true."\nShe probably will start in Philadelphia in September.\nAlthough it's unusual for such a prestigious orchestra to take on someone so young, Kaenzig knows Jantsch has the talent to succeed.\n"I feel like the Philadelphia Orchestra is getting somebody who is going to bring them great honor," he said. "They're taking a chance, but not really"