GM enters bankruptcy filing - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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Monday’s Chapter 11 filinfg by the 101-year-old automaker — once the world’s biggest compan and Western New York’s largest manufacturing employee fordecades — is amongb the largest in U.S. history and largest-ever U.S. manufacturingt bankruptcy. Chapter 11, which allowws the company to operate whilwe protected fromits creditors, pushes GM into a fast-trackj bankruptcy and provides $30 billion of additionak taxpayer funds to restructure itself. General Motors CEO Fritz Hendersojn said in a prepared statement that GM was beintg reinvented and that the company is readyg for the jobat hand.
"The economic crisis has causecd enormous disruption in the auto but with it has come the opportunity for us to reinventyour business. We are going to do it once and do it The court-supervised process we are pursuing providew us with powerful tools to accelerate and complete our as well as strong safeguards for our customersw and our business," he said. The GM plan as detailefd by U.S. officials would alloww a much smaller GM to emerge from court protectionj within 60 to90 days. GM also plan to close 11 U.S. facilities and idle anothetr three plants by the endof 2010.
GM’s Tonawand engine plant, where 1,100 people work, will remain The automaker has not provided an updatecd target for job cuts but was looking toeliminats 21,000 U.S. factory jobs from the 54,000 unioj members it now employs. Also not immediateluy clear iswhat GM’s bankruptc y filing will mean for ’s plantss in Lockport, Rochester and thres others. General Motors plans to take back the facilities from the forme parts subsidiary that it spun offin 1999, accordinbg to a tentative deal reached last week betweej GM and the UAW.
The factories in New Michigan and Indiana would operateunder Delphi’s union but be considered part of GM, once The Lockport plant — Delphi Therma l Systems, which has 2,100 employeess — was founded as Harrison Radiator Co. in 1910 and becamre part of GMin 1918. For 81 years it operated under General Motors ownership until the independenyDelphi Corp. was formed. Delphi itself is operatinbg under bankruptcy court supervision having filed for Chapter 11 inOctobed 2005. The Troy, Mich.-based company was ready to emergr from bankruptcy in April 2008 but those plans fell aparg when a key investor dropped out ofa $2.
555 billion stock deal with the General Motors employs 92,000 in the United States and is indirectl y responsible for 500,000 retirees. The U.S. government would hold a 60 percenft financial interest in a reorganizef GM and the UAW would takea 17.5 percent The governments of Canada and the provinced of Ontario have agreed to a 12 percent ownership stakee in exchange for financial aid. GM bondholders woulx get 10 percent.