Now that Ed Whitacre, GM’s chairman, has taken over as interim CEO and is moving at sprint speed to get GM back on track, speculation is beginning to arise on possible candidates to fill the CEO position.  It was made public yesterday that Spencer Stuart, the executive search firm, will he handling the CEO search for GM.  While a number of analysts think Whitacre as interim CEO might actually end up with the job, Randolph Gulian, evp/general manager for recruitment process outsourcing and executive search for Allegris RPO, in an interview with the Deal.com has come up with a number of very unusual but possible candidates.  During the interview, Gulian mentioned Mark Hurd, HP’s CEO and General Electric’s John Rice.  While neither of these men may actually be candidates the possibility of someone big from outside the automobile industry may just be the way to go.  Check out the entire interview, Gulian seems to be on to something.

Alex Taylor III wrote a brief story for Time on GM’s surprise announcement that Fritz Henderson was out as GM’s CEO and Ed Whitacre, GM’s chairman would serve as interim CEO until replacement is found.  Taylor was right on the mark in his explanation.  IN the story he wrote,

Henderson will be remembered as being as smart and experienced as any GM CEO, but he appeared tone-deaf when it came to listening to Whitacre and the rest of his board of directors. Since he had no role in picking them and they owed him nothing, that proved to be a fatal mistake.

When the board made it clear that it wanted Henderson to replace chief financial officer Ray Young, Henderson dawdled. He could rightly complain that government curbs on executive pay made it difficult to recruit experienced financial executives, but it must have looked to the board as if he couldn’t make a decision or was simply stalling.

Check it out, it’s worth the read.

The internet is abuzz with rumors that Frederick “Fritz” Henderson, GM’s CEO who took the reins after GM’s longtime CEO Rick Wagoner was forced out, is about to resign.  The rumor is yet to be confirmed but appears quite plausible.  According to CTV News Chairman Ed Whitacre, Jr. will serve as the interim CEO until a replacement is found for Henderson.  Let’s hope GM selects someone innovative and ready to go.  While Henderson was a vast improvement over Wagoner he has still not shown the kind of leadership necessary to take the new company out of the abyss.

TWST: In recent months, what are some of the holdings that you’ve found attractive to add to the portfolio at this time?

Mr. Stevens: Focusing on our institutional portfolios, our five largest holdings are  3M (MMM), Chevron (CVX), Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH), IBM (IBM) and Schlumberger (SLB). One of the important ingredients that we’re looking for in this environment, because of our economic forecast, is finding companies that have a good deal of exposure to foreign demand for their products.

Generally, we are more encouraged by economic activity abroad compared to the U.S. Specifically, we feel areas like the Asia-Pacific Basin, India and Brazil are likely to see demand well above the average for the world. These companies have a significant portion of their revenues coming from outside of the United States. From the bottom-up, we’re trying to uncover those companies that maintain very strong fundamentals and attractive future growth prospects.

TWST: Do you like dividend-paying companies?

Mr. Stevens: We do like dividend-paying companies. It’s a nice component to have, however we want management teams allocating capital in the most efficient way possible – either internal growth initiatives, stock repurchases or dividends, whatever will generate the highest return on capital. Some of the industrial companies that we own have a reasonable dividend, like 3M.