General Motors - Financial Ratio Analysis

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General Motors - Financial Ratio Analysis

General Motors - Financial Ratio Analysis

I. General Motors History Highlights

In its early years the automobile industry consisted of hundreds of firms, each
producing a few models. William Durant, who bought and reorganized a failing
Buick Motors in 1904, determined that if several automobile makers would unite,
it would increase the protection for the group. He formed the General Motors
Company in Flint, Michigan, in 1908.

Durant had bought 17 companies (including Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Pontiac) by
1910, the year a bankers' syndicate forced him to step down. In a 1915 stock
swap, he regained control through Chevrolet, a company he had formed with race
car driver Louis Chevrolet. GM created the GM Acceptance Corporation (auto
financing) and acquired a number of businesses, including Fisher Body,
Frigidaire (sold in 1979), and a small bearing company, Hyatt Roller Bearing.
With the Hyatt acquisition came Alfred Sloan, an administrative genius who would
build GM into a corporate colossus.

Sloan, president from 1923 to 1937, implemented a decentralized management
system, now emulated worldwide. The auto maker competed by offering models
ranging from luxury to economy, colors besides black, and yearly style
modifications. By 1927 it had become the industry leader.

GM introduced a line of front-wheel-drive compacts in 1979. Under Roger Smith,
CEO from 1981 to 1990, GM laid off thousands of workers as part of a massive
companywide restructuring and cost cutting program.

In 1984 GM formed NUMMI with Toyota as an experiment to see if Toyota's
manufacturing techniques would work in the US. The joint venture's first car was
the Chevy Nova. GM bought Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems (1984) and Hughes
Aircraft (1986). In 1989 the company bought 50% of Saab Automobile.

In 1990 GM launched Saturn, its first new nameplate since 1926, reflecting a new
companywide emphasis on quality. Two years later it made the largest stock
offering in US history, raising $2.2 billion. Culminating a period of boardroom
coups (relating to the company's lagging effort to reduce costs) in the early
1990s, John Smith replaced Robert Stempel as CEO.

NBC apologized in 1993 for improprieties in its expose alleging that GM pickups
equipped with "sidesaddle" gas tanks tended to explode upon side impact. The
government nonetheless asked the company to recall 4.7 million trucks. A
unanimous federal appeals court in 1995 overturned the set

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