Spiegel Online  Inside the Collapse of GM's Opel Deal  Many
refer to the man in charge at the corporate headquarters of
General Motors (GM), housed in the five glass towers of the
Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, as "Fix-it Fritz."
Frederick A. Henderson, 50, the chairman and CEO of GM, has
always been called Fritz, even as a child. He is a polite man
who, in his 25-year career at GM, has acquired the reputation of
being a levelheaded numbers and cleanup man, a problem-
solver—hence the nickname.  Last Tuesday, the German chancellor
made the unpleasant discovery that Henderson lives up to his
moniker. In the space of 20 lines on a piece of paper, Henderson
destroyed Angela Merkel's dream of being celebrated as the
intrepid savior of German automaker Opel.  In the short letter
to Merkel's newly appointed economics minister, Rainer Brüderle,
Henderson announced that the board of directors planned to
"retain Opel Europe as part of the new GM." In explaining the
decision, he cited the parent company's "imp