Former AT&T CEO Whitacre to chair GM board

General Motors announced Tuesday that it would appoint former AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre as its new chairman after it emerges from bankruptcy. GM filed bankruptcy protection earlier this month as part of the Obama Administration's plan to remake the automaker into a profitable company that sells more environmentally friendly vehicles.

Whitacre will succeed former chairman Rick Wagoner, who resigned under pressure from the government in March.

Whitacre said in a brief statement Tuesday that he was "honored to be able to serve GM" and to "take part in its reinvention." Whitacre is best known in the telecom industry for reuniting several of the Baby Bell companies that comprise the contemporary AT&T. After taking over as CEO for Southwestern Bell in 1990, Whitacre helmed SBC's merger with Pacific Telesis in 1997 and its merger with Ameritech in 1999. The next decade, SBC acquired Bell South, the last of the original Baby Bells, to make AT&T the dominant telecom provider throughout the Southern and Midwestern United States.

Whitacre announced his retirement from AT&T unexpectedly in 2007, after which he was replaced by current CEO Randall Stephenson. Prior to his retirement, Network World said that Whitacre "will certainly go down in the industry record books as power broker extraordinaire" due to his successful acquisitions of the Baby Bells and Cingular Wireless during his tenure.

Telecom analyst Jeff Kagan, who has followed Whitacre extensively throughout his career, says he "is the one of the most aggressive CEOs" he's ever seen because Whitacre "sees the future and transforms the company to be a leader or perhaps the leader in that industry."

"Ed does not know the automobile business, but he has unique ability to understand a business as it transforms itself," Kagan says. "He was a big success in the changing telecom space. Perhaps he can be just as successful in the transforming automobile space."

Whitacre is on the boards of the ExxonMobil Corporation and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation.