GM's Lutz sells all shares under compensation plan

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp's GM.N former vice chairman and chief product planner, Bob Lutz, paid a 10 percent penalty to sell all of the GM shares he had held in a deferred compensation account, the company said in a securities filing on Wednesday.

The stock sales netted $141,986 for Lutz, who is now an adviser to the embattled automaker, according to the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Earlier this month Lutz sold all of his direct holdings in GM for $130,989.

A year ago, those two categories of GM stock holdings for Lutz would have been worth over $5 million.

GM is headed for either a bankruptcy filing or an out-of- court restructuring that would wipe out current stockholders by flooding the market with new shares to pay off creditors.

The automaker's stock could be either worthless in a bankruptcy or worth less than 2 cents per share if it proceeds with its plans to issue shares to creditors led by the U.S. Treasury, the company has said.

On Tuesday, Lutz sold all of the 133,859 GM shares held for him in a deferred compensation and paid a 10 percent penalty for the early withdrawal and to cover income taxes.

Two other GM executives also sold off shares transferred to them in deferred compensation.

Thomas Stephens, Lutz's successor, sold $49,766 in GM shares after paying the same penalties. Maureen Kempston Darkes, who heads GM's operations in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, sold $22,354 in stock, the company said in a filing.

(Reporting by David Bailey and Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Andre Grenon)