General Motors Corp. Chairman John G. Smale, the outside director who led a boardroom coup three years ago at the world’s largest automaker, will leave that post Jan. 1, the company announced.
He will be replaced by Jack Smith, who will continue as president and chief executive. Smale will remain on the board and chair a newly established executive committee of the board.
In a statement, Smale said that in 1992, GM’s board thought it would be good to have a chairman who was not a company executive, since the automaker faced “substantial business challenges.”
“Now, some three years later, it’s clear that GM’s management team under Jack Smith’s leadership has turned GM around.”
GM earned record profits of $4.9 billion in 1994.
The company also said Harry J. Pearce, a GM executive vice president, will become vice chairman.
Smale, the former chairman of consumer products giant Procter & Gamble Co., became GM’s chairman in November 1992 after leading a boardroom revolt that forced the resignation of Robert Stempel as chairman and chief executive. The shakeup split the chairman and CEO jobs at the automaker for the first time since the 1950s.
