DETROIT — The new General Motors arose today as lawyers finished an all-night paperwork session transferring the bulk of the automaker's assets to a company controlled by the U.S. government.

Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, new GM is now cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans.

But the new GM also emerges amidst the worst sales slump in a quarter-century.

The massive transfer of factories, money and intellectual property was completed about 6:30 a.m., according to a person briefed on the situation, clearing the way for a smaller and faster company better equipped to compete in the brutally tough global automotive market.

One bankruptcy expert called GM's 40-day case the fastest ever for a company of its size.

Spurred on by the Obama administration's support, the bankruptcy process was two day's faster than crosstown rival Chrysler Group's 42-day time frame.

GM's warp-speed emergence from bankruptcy was expected to be announced by CEO Fritz Henderson and new Chairman Edward Whitacre Jr. at a 9 a.m. news conference.

Henderson was expected to announce details of the plan to make new GM profitable again. The troubled automaker has lost more than $80 billion in the past four years.

Henderson was also expected to announce that GM will cut another 4,000 white-collar jobs, including 450 top executives. The company still employs 88,000 people in the U.S. and 235,000 worldwide.

He also was to describe how GM will streamline its bureaucratic management structure to become profitable again. GM has said it will be able to make money even if the U.S. auto market stays at a depressed level of 10 million to 10.5 million vehicles sold.

Yet despite massive cost reductions, experts say GM must produce vehicles that people want to buy, and change its image to one on the cutting edge of efficiency and quality.

Rep. Gary Peters, whose Michigan district is home to three GM factories, said the company's emergence signals a new era for the domestic auto industry and the thousands of people it employs.

GM ranked as the top global automaker in terms of sales for 77 years before Japan's Toyota Motors snatched its crown in 2008. The company sold nearly 8.4 million cars and trucks around the world in 2008, falling short of Toyota's nearly 9 million. Once the largest corporation in America, GM held the top spot in the Fortune 500 ranking for 20 years before being pushed out of the top spot in 1973 by Exxon Mobil. It reclaimed No. 1 status in 1985 and held it for another 15 years.

Experts say GM's success will depend largely on its ability to persuade consumers that it's a different company, one that builds cars that will equal or outlast Japanese models.