New Opel Boss Won’t Overhaul Business Plan

General Motors Co.'s Adam Opel unit, whose CEO was ousted last week, says it won't draw up a new five-year business plan.

Opel's supervisory board approved the plan presented last month by then-CEO Karl-Friedrich Stracke, who also was president of GM Europe. Steve Girsky, chairman of Opel and vice chairman of GM, was tapped to run the European operations until a permanent successor is named. News reports say Opel's board will meet on Tuesday to appoint an acting CEO.

Analysts had predicted Girsky would accelerate Stracke's plan and take more drastic action. The existing plan aims to return Opel to profitability by boosting exports, making "massive" product investment and reducing development, engineering and materials expenses. Opel also intends to shutter an assembly plant in Bochum, Germany, after 2016.

But Berthold Huber, head of Germany's IG Metall union, tells the Financial Times that Stracke's mid-term plan "won't be sufficient" to end the unit's losses. Huber also warns that Europe's auto market downturn has been so severe that Opel could exhaust its loan facility from GM.

The FT estimates the facility may have shrunk by as much as €600 million ($735 million) from GM's original €2.6 billion ($3.2 billion) loan in 2010.