GM files for bankruptcy protection - Business First of Columbus:

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The filing, made in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, marks the fourth-largesg bankruptcy filing in U.S. and the largest ever filing of its kind fora U.S. It follows months of speculatioh thatthe 101-year-old company wouled have to restructure through the courts, despited desperate attempts by management to avoid the move. As it turnedf out, though, the bankruptcy filing was the only way GM could get its hande on the government money it needsto survive. In its GM listed $82.3 billion in assetsx and $172.8 billion in debts. Click to download the filing. The U.S.
government already has injectede $20 billion into GM, and will provide anotheer $30 billion to keep the company going as it workszthrough bankruptcy. The investment will buy the governmengta 72.5 percent stake. That will give government officialss more power to name members of the GM Officials have saidthey don’t want to get involvedx in the daily operations of the But that may prove to be quitw a challenge with as much governmeng money as is involved.
“It’s not forever,” Brucew Belzowski, associate director of the Automotive Analysis Divisionb at the University of Michigam TransportationResearch Institute, said in a telephone interviesw with bizjournals, the online arm of Columbus Business Firs t parent American City Business Journals. “If they had a it would be a short periodof time. The longer that it stretches out the more of a politicall liabilityit becomes.” While most publid attention is focused on GM, the automaker’s many suppliera are certain to be affected as well. President Barac k Obama is set to talk about the auto industru shortlybefore noon.
Generalo Motors CEO Fritz Henderson will folloa with a news conference ofhis own. Obamwa administration and GM officials have said they want a much more competitive GM to emerge from the bankruptcg within 60 to 90 GM plans to sell or close such brandseas Saturn, Saab, and Pontiac, and will shed 2,600 dealerships. The company will close 11 U.S. manufacturing facilitiesd by the endof 2010. To accomplish the leanerr GM, the company will be split into a new GM and anold GM. The new GM will be ownefd by the U.S. and Canadian governments, the United Auto Workersz Union, and current bond holdera in the company.