--- title: Business & Finance: Personnel: Oct. 23, 1933 description: Last week the following were news: Signius Wilhelm Poul (William) Knudsen, 54, head of General Motors' Chevrolet division, was made executive vice president in charge of all GM's... canonical: https://time.com/archive/6753219/business-finance-personnel-oct-23-1933/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 1933-10-23T05:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-28T15:16:03.227Z article:section: U.S. og:title: Business & Finance: Personnel: Oct. 23, 1933 og:description: Last week the following were news: Signius Wilhelm Poul (William) Knudsen, 54, head of General Motors' Chevrolet division, was made executive vice president in charge of all GM's... og:url: https://time.com/archive/6753219/business-finance-personnel-oct-23-1933/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Business & Finance: Personnel: Oct. 23, 1933 twitter:description: Last week the following were news: Signius Wilhelm Poul (William) Knudsen, 54, head of General Motors' Chevrolet division, was made executive vice president in charge of all GM's... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # Business & Finance: Personnel: Oct. 23, 1933 by [TIME](/author/time/) Oct 23, 1933 5:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Oct 23, 1933 5:00 AM CUT Last week the following were news: Signius Wilhelm Poul (William) Knudsen, 54, head of General Motors’ Chevrolet division, was made executive vice president in charge of all GM’s manufacturing operations in the U. S. and Canada. A Dane from Copenhagen, he emigrated to the U. S. at 21, got a job in a shipyard, worked for Erie R. R., then shot up as an assembly man for Henry Ford. Quitting as manager of all Ford plants in 1921, he soon joined Chevrolet. A tall, slightly stooped man with a big walrus mustache, Motorman Knudsen is a genius of production and a hero to all good Danish schoolboys. John C. van Eck, president of Royal Dutch-Shell’s big U. S. subsidiary, Shell Union Oil Corp., was elected to the speciallycreated post of executive committee chairman. He was succeeded by R. G. A. van der Woude, Dutch-born head of a Shell subsidiary. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6753219/business-finance-personnel-oct-23-1933/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6753219/business-finance-personnel-oct-23-1933/"},"headline":"Business & Finance: Personnel: Oct. 23, 1933","datePublished":"1933-10-23T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-28T15:16:03.227Z","description":"Last week the following were news: Signius Wilhelm Poul (William) Knudsen, 54, head of General Motors' Chevrolet division, was made executive vice president in charge of all GM's...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6753219/business-finance-personnel-oct-23-1933/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6753219/business-finance-personnel-oct-23-1933/","name":"Business & Finance: Personnel: Oct. 23, 1933"}}]}] ```