General Motors Corp. posted a fourth-quarter net loss of $4.8 billion on Thursday, much worse than Wall Street had expected, amid high costs, shrinking market share and sluggish sales of sport utility vehicles. It was the fifth straight quarterly loss for the world's largest automaker and brought its losses for all of 2005 to $8.6 billion.
"It was a year in which two significant fundamental weaknesses in our North American operations were fully exposed - our huge legacy cost burden and our inability to adjust structural costs in line with falling revenue," Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said in a statement.