General Motors has named Nick Reilly, international operations chief, to act as an interim overseer of its Adam Opel GmbH division in Europe, an arm of the company undergoing serious reorganization in a quest for profitability.

Primarily, Reilly will be charged with steering Opel, based in Germany, and Vauxhall, its UK brand, toward a long-term business strategy while GM looks for an executive to take on the position permanently.

In an article for Bloomberg by Chris Reiter and Andreas Cremer, Ferdinand Dudenhoffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen was quoted, "Slashing costs will be Reilly's main assignment. He has no choice but to step on the spending brakes."

In the statement announcing the appointment, GM CEO Fritz Henderson said of Reilly, "With his deep experience with the Opel and Vauxhall brands, Nick is well suited to lead this transition and to work toward the earliest possible normalization of the business."

Reilly was head of Vauxhall in the late 1990s before leading GM's European sales for just under a year before being moved in 2002 to oversee GM Daewoo Auto and Technology Co. in South Korea. Since July, Reilly has been in charge of GM's international business. He follows Carl-Peter Forster at Opel, who stepped down three days after GM announced it would keep the division, squelching a planned sale to Magna International Inc.