Rattner: Chrysler’s survival depended on dumping Cerberus management

Steve Rattner, former head of the Obama Administration’s Auto Task Force, said replacing the management team installed by Cerberus Capital Mangement was one of the task force’s objectives in restructuring Chrysler.

Rattner, who was speaking at Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored forum about the global auto industry, told the audience, “We wanted to have a completely fresh management team. You can’t come to any conclusion that management is not a huge ingredient, a huge determinant of success.”

In fact, Rattner also said the task force’s motivation for supporting the Chrysler-Fiat alliance “was frankly to get new management and to get what we thought was one of two or three best management teams in the world.”

Cerberus’ management team consisted of Robert Nardelli, ex-CEO of Home depot, former Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda and Jim Press, former CEO of Toyota’s U.S. operation. Nardelli left Chrysler when the new company emerged from bankruptcy. He then took a consulting assignment with Cerberus. LaSorda retired from Chrysler on May 1, 2009 and took a job advising Penske Group on the planned purchase of Saturn from GM. Press is due to leave Chrysler at the end of this month.

Bruce Nussbaum, writing in BusinessWeek’s August 2007 edition, said, “Picking Robert Nardelli to save Chrysler is the most bone-headed idea of 2007.”

Apparently the President’s Auto Task Force agreed.