Mr. & Mrs. Wagoner- R.I.P (Relaxing in Propsperity)

(Source: ABC News)

(Relaxing in Prosperity)R.I.P Rick Wagoner – Gets $20Mil for losing tens of billions of dollars and tanking stock price from $60 (June 2000) to $1.27 (March 2009)

Rick Wagoner will leave his post as CEO of bailed-out General Motors with a $20 million retirement package, the company’s financial filings show.

Although the Treasury Department has barred GM from paying severance toWagoner or any other senior executive, Wagoner is eligible to collect millions in retirement benefits from his former employer, according to the documents reviewed by ABC News.

The Obama administration asked for Wagoner to resign Sunday, as part of its restructuring of the auto industry. President Obama said this morning that forcing Wagoner out indicated it was a time for new leadership. 

Under Wagoner’s leadership, GM lost tens of billions of dollars, took billions in taxpayer-financed aid, and announced plans to cut 47,000 employees by the end of 2009.

Click here to read the entire article.  For those interested in reading Wagoner’s farewell e-mail, please visit The Truth About Cars.  

For those who care to know, here is what GM’s Executive Officer Severance Policy  looks like (Thanks, an0nymous poster @EVcast): 

General Motors executive officers are generally at-will employees who serve at the discretion of the Board. In early 2005, GM adopted a policy applicable to executive officers requiring stockholder approval of any severance benefits if: 
• The executive’s employment was terminated prior to retirement; and 
• The present value of the proposed severance benefits would exceed 2.99 times the sum of the executive’s annual base salary and target annual incentive. 

Note: TransportGooru wonders if this culture of execessively compensating under-performing, over-paid must-be-retired executives will ever come to an end?   If Mr. Wagoner has any iota of ethics that his alma mater (Harvard Business School) tries to inculcate in its wards, he must politely decline and walk away without taking a penny from this $20mil payout.