Fritz Henderson, President and CEO of the new General Motors, and his new slim-trim nine-man Executive Committee will have a disproportionate number of Canadians helping them implement their strategic vision.
Three of the four remaining GM brands - Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC truck - are in the hands of Canadian-born talent.
Brent Dewar from Vancouver is global chief for Chevrolet. Despite looking more like a student intern than a 30-year GM veteran, Dewar is tipped by many to be on the fast track to the very top of the corporation.
Susan Docherty is vice president in charge of the Buick-Pontiac-GMC channel (soon to become the Buick-GMC channel as soon as she unloads the last 18,000-odd Pontiacs in inventory). She started her GM career as a summer student on the midnight shift in a transmission factory in her Windsor home town.
The fourth brand boss, looking after the flagship Cadillac brand, is Bryan Nesbitt, a name you might recall. He's an interesting story in his own right, even if he isn't Canadian. Come back tomorrow for more on him.
The only Canadian on the Executive Committee is Chief Financial Officer Ray Young, who spent much of his youth in my own home town of Milton Ontario.
Two Canadian GM veterans won't be around to help - at least not for much longer. Toronto native Maureen Kempston-Darkes, the hugely respected former president of GM of Canada and currently President of GM for Latin America, Africa and the Middle East (the highest-rank ever achieved by a woman within GM) retires at the end of 2009.
And McMaster grad Jim Taylor, whose tenure as head of Cadillac played a significant role in that brand's resurgence over the past decade or so and who went from there to head up the Hummer Division, was part of the package the Chinese purchaser of that brand acquired.
Better learn feng shui, Jim.
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