The fallout from General Motors decision to keep its German subsidiary Opel, instead of selling it to a team of a Canadian auto parts manufacturer, Magna, and the Russian Sberbank, has spread to a disagreement between the two top executives of GM and  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, 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.
That came just after 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, which could lead to the loss of 10,000 Opel jobs across Europe, angering its workers who thought that Merkel had worked out a deal.
But Henderson is believed to still 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 for the way GM made its decision, after months of negotiation to sell Opel to 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. Confusion has also reigned over the extent to which the German government was prepared to finance GM’s restructuring of Opel. Merkel said that GM would have to bear “the main burden” of making the ailing carmaker profitable again, but a spokesman for her told the German Press Agency Deutsche-Presse-Agentur (dpa) that the government was now expecting clarity from GM on whether or not it wanted money for Opel, and the rapid presentation of a new strategy for the firm. Opel employs 50,000 people in Europe. GM has said it intends to cut costs by 30 percent, which would entail some 10,000 job losses.
The German government and unions are afraid that GM will not protect German workers in particular, as had been the case under the proposed deal with Magna.
The head of Opel’s workers’ council, Klaus Franz, said, “We are living through days of chaos with GM. The chairman does not know what the chief executive is doing.” He told dpa: “There is no agreed communications strategy, no agreed business policy.”
 The rift between Henderson and Whitacre is thought to date back to before GM announced it would hold on to Opel, with Whitacre in favor of selling Opel to Magna, and Henderson, who has a reputation as a tough negotiator, against it. GM has since said that it would repay the amount that it had used of the 1.5 billion euros ($2.2 billion) provided as a bridging loan by the German government, by the end of the month. Berlin offered Magna a further 3 billion euros in credit and other aid to restructure Opel. No such clear offer has been made now to GM in the wake of its surprise decision, and government advisors now oppose state aid for GM.
GM said it was shifting its European head office from Zurich, Switzerland to the German town of Ruesselsheim. Located west of Frankfurt, Ruesselsheim is a sprawling compound of offices and factories where Opel cars are designed and built. “We want to give a boost to the Opel brand,” a GM spokesman told dpa. The GM Europe head office has been in Switzerland since the mid- 1980s because the company owned both Opel and the Swedish brand Saab. “After we sold Saab, the multi-brand approach no longer applied,” the spokesman said. GM’s only other brand in Europe is Chevrolet, the badge it attaches to low-cost South Korean-made cars.