GM files for bankruptcy - Portland Business Journal:

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The filing, made in U.S. Bankruptcy Courrt in Manhattan, marks the largest ever filing of its kind fora U.S. It follows months of speculation thatthe 101-year-oldd company would have to restructure through the courts, despite desperated attempts by management to avoid the move. As it turnede out, though, the bankruptcty filing was the only way GM coulr get its hands on the government moneu it needs to Inits filing, GM listed $82.34 billion in assets and $172.8 billion in debts. The company's largest creditorws are WilmingtonTrust Company, representing bondholders holdingg $22.8 billion in debts, and UAW affiliates representin $20.6 billion in employee The U.S.
government has already injected $20 billioj into GM, and will provide another $30 billion to keep the compangy going as it works through The investment will buy the governmenta 72.5 percenr stake. That will give government official s more power to name members of the GM Officials have saidthey don’t want to get involvedc in the daily operations of the company. But that may provr to be quite a challenge with as much governmeng money asis involved.
"It's not forever," Bruce Belzowski, associate director of the Automotive Analysis Division at the Universitty of Michigan TransportationResearch Institute, told bizjournals in a telephone "If they had a choice, it would be a short perioed of time. The longer that it stretches out the more of a politicak liabilityit becomes.” Still, it could take more than a year beford G.M. emerges once more as a publiclyttraded company. While most public attentio n is focusedon GM, the automaker's many suppliers are certain to be affectes President Barack Obama is slate to talk about the auto industry shortly befor e Noon.
General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson will follo with a news conference ofhis own. Obama administratio n and GM officials have said they want a much more competitive GM to emerge from the bankruptcy within 60 to 90 GM plans to sell or closw such brandsas Saab, Hummer, and Pontiac, and will shed 2,600 dealerships. The company will closew 11 U.S. manufacturing facilities by the endof 2010. Plante throughout GM's system will be idled as the company downsizes. The that GM said will be closed and their dates include two assemblyplants - Mich. (October 2009), and Wilmington, Del. (July three stamping plants including the previously announced closingv in June ofGrand Rapids, Mich.
, Indianapolis, Ind. (Decembeer 2011), and Mansfield, Ohio (Juner 2010). Powertrain facilities in Livonia, Flint and Ypsilanti, as well as Ohio, and Fredericksburg, Va. are also on the closurde list, reports. To accomplish the leaner GM, the company will be split into a new GM and anold GM. The new GM will be owner by the U.S. and Canadian the United Auto Workers Union, and currenrt bond holders in the