Steve Rattner on General Motors' IPO and Management

Steve Rattner was interviewed by Bloomberg Television's Margaret Brennan earlier today and here is what he had to say about the company’s plan to go public once again…

"These kinds of decisions are a series of choices. By definition, the longer any company waits to go public, the more valuable the equity is and the easier it is to sell that to the public. There are very good reasons why GM should go public sooner. Ed Whitacre believes strongly that government ownership is a stigma and the White House believes strongly it should be out of the car business. Given the extraordinary turnaround, frankly faster and better than what we had imagined, I think the IPO could be very successful if the overall market cooperates."

When asked if this is the right time to turn to the equity markets, he noted, "It depends on at least one factor beyond our control which is the state of the markets. We have had a rough couple of days. This would not be the day you'd want to price an IPO. Certainly, we have to have some stability and upward momentum in the market for this to go well. I would also concede that filing an IPO is perhaps a tad earlier than people would like in an ideal world, given the company has only had two profitable quarters. But Ed Whitacre has been very clear on the importance of getting government ownership down, to hopefully zero, before too long and the White House has been equally clear about its desire to get out of the car business. There is a lot of impetus behind this IPO."

When asked about his feelings regarding the management team at GM, he said, “I personally have an enormous amount of confidence in both Ed Whitacre and in Dan Akerson. I was central to the decision to ask Ed to be chairman and put Dan on the board. I've known Dan for a long time and have a lot of respect for him. In particular because the economic environment is a challenge, it is important to have really strong leadership at the helm… It was a very broken culture there before and Ed has made enormous strides in fixing it. I know Dan very well and I am confident he will move in the right direction."

For the entire interview, please visit…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cSCylX_VOA&feature=player_embedded