Berlin - A disagreement between the two top executives of US automotive giant General Motors (GM) has created confusion about whether or not the firm will get German government money to restructure its European subsidiary Opel. Signs of a power struggle between GM's chairman Edward Whitacre and Chief Executive Fritz Henderson emerged Friday, in an interview given by Whitacre to a German newspaper.
Whitacre told the Kolnische Rundschau, "I believe that we really don't need any money from the German government. If Ms (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel does not want to make anything available, then we will just pay for it ourselves."
"Maybe this news will make your chancellor happy," he added.
Last week GM made an surprise U-turn on plans to sell Opel, angering the firm's 25,000 workers in Germany and the Berlin government, saying it would restructure the firm itself.
However, GM chief executive Fritz Henderson is believed to be seeking German government aid, similar to the credit offered by Berlin to previous potential buyers for Opel.
Whitacre also distanced himself from Henderson's apology earlier this week for the way GM made its decision, after months of negotiation to sell Opel to an Austrian-Russian consortium led by Sberbank and Magna.
"I do not agree at all with Henderson on this. The decision-making process may well have caused some confusion, but there is nothing to reproach us for," said Whitacre, a former AT&T executive and US President Barack Obama's appointee to the board of GM.
In the past several days confusion has also reigned over the extent to which the German government was prepared to finance GM's restructuring of Opel. On Tuesday, Chancellor Merkel said that GM would have to bear "the main burden" of making the ailing carmaker profitable again.
A spokesman for Chancellor Merkel told the German Press Agency
