Frederic G Donner

Joined G.M. as an accountant in 1926 and enjoyed a steady rise up the corporate ladder. After graduation from the local high school, he studied economics at the University of Michigan and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1923. He worked for an accounting firm in Chicago for three years before moving to New York in 1926 to join the financial staff of G.M. He rose to assistant treasurer, general assistant treasurer and, in 1941, vice president in charge of the financial staff. He helped set up one of the first bank-credit arrangements in World War II to assure working capital for expanding war production. In 1948, he was among G.M. executives to tour Germany's bombed-out cities and suggest that the company reclaim its German subsidiary, Adam Opel AG, which had been written off as a loss in the war but remains one of West Germany's biggest car makers. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the board of directors of the Communications Satellite Corporation. He also was a former director of the Metropolitan Opera and, from 1968 to 1975, chairman of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Mr. Donner's survivors include a daughter and six grandchildren. His wife, the former Eileen Isaacson, died in 1983.