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Member, Beacon International Group, Ltd.
DETROIT (Bloomberg)—General Motors Co. contributed 60.6 million shares, valued at $2.32 billion at Thursday's closing price, to its U.S. pension plans that the automaker wants fully funded as soon as 2013.
The 40.4 million shares contributed to the plan for hourly workers and 20.2 million shares for the plan covering salaried employees completes a $6 billion contribution that the company announced in October, the Detroit-based automaker said Friday in a statement.
GM’s pension obligations could be funded as soon as 2013, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said in a Tuesday interview at the Detroit auto show.
Reducing debt and pension obligations will help the largest U.S. automaker to maintain spending on vehicle development through downturns.
“You can’t have this huge tail wagging the small dog,” Mr. Liddell said. “You can’t be a $100 billion pension plan with a car company attached to it. The value of the company should be driven by the quality of the vehicles and the margins we make on them, not what the discount rate is.”
The U.S. plans were underfunded by $17.1 billion at the end of 2009. Calculations of pension liabilities are sensitive to assumptions about interest rates used to calculate the present value of projected future expenditures.
Mr. Liddell said it is “reasonable to think we’re in an interest rate-increasing environment over the next three to five years,” which would help GM to fund its pension plans. He said GM “is not relying on that.”
The “first call” on GM’s cash is engineering and marketing, he said, while repaying debt and making pension plan contributions are secondary.
GM has gained 16% since the automaker’s $33 initial public offering in November. The shares fell 35 cents Thursday to $38.27.
Copyright 2011 Bloomberg
DETROIT—Funding of General Motors Co.’s pension plans has improved slightly since the end of last year, but its unfunded pension liabilities remain massive, according to a Wednesday filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.