Photo: Roberto Barroso/ABr / CC BY 3.0 br (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Wagoner fascinates me less as a villain than as a cautionary tale about scale. A Duke graduate who climbed to the very top of General Motors, he ended up resigning at the White House's request as the company hemorrhaged value during the financial crisis. I find it easy to pile on a CEO, but harder to imagine steering an industrial giant into a once-in-a-century storm. What stays with me is not the failure but the willingness to stand in the line of fire and own the outcome. He reads to me as a careful, decent technocrat caught by tectonic forces nobody fully controlled.
Overview
George Richard Wagoner Jr. (born February 9, 1953) is an American businessman and former chair and chief executive officer of General Motors. Wagoner resigned on March 29, 2009, at the request of the White House. The latter part of Wagoner's tenure as CEO found him under heavy criticism as the market valuation of GM went down by more than 90% and the company lost more than US$82 billion.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Rick Wagoner
- Name (Japanese)
- リチャード・ワゴナー
- Reading
- りちゃーど・わごなー
- Born
- February 9, 1953 (age 73)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Aquarius / Snake
- Origin
- Wilmington, Delaware, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- entrepreneur / business executive / engineer
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- John Randolph Tucker High School
- University
- Duke University
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Entrepreneur — see all → · Business executive — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.