FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HUGHES AND PANAMSAT SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETE FINANCING TRANSACTIONS

El Segundo,  Calif. - February 25, 2002  - Earlier today, Hughes Electronics Corporation completed a series of financing transactions providing the Company with significant new liquidity. As part of the financing, PanAmSat Corporation, an 81% owned subsidiary of HUGHES, raised $2.05 billion in new bank debt and long-term notes, a portion of which was used to repay the $1.725 billion loan that HUGHES extended to PanAmSat in May, 1997. In addition to providing $1.725 billion of increased liquidity to HUGHES, this repayment allows HUGHES to access a credit line arranged with General Motors Acceptance Corporation that provides $500 million of new financing.

"We are very pleased with the successful completion of these transactions, particularly PanAmSat's high-yield bond offering for which demand was far greater than anticipated," said Jack A. Shaw, HUGHES' president and chief executive officer. "With this financing, we have put in place a solid capital structure at HUGHES that is expected to see us through the completion of the EchoStar merger."

In addition, HUGHES also completed a restructuring of its existing credit facilities. The Company's $750 million revolving credit facility has been amended and increased in size, allowing HUGHES to consolidate and extend the maturity of certain credit facilities associated with the DIRECTV Latin America businesses. The new secured credit facility's capacity is $1,235.5 million and is expected to be supplemented with an institutional term loan to be placed in the next few weeks. Bank of America Securities and Salomon Smith Barney were joint book-running lead arrangers of the HUGHES facilities and have underwritten the future term loan placement.

HUGHES, a unit of General Motors Corporation, is the world's leading provider of digital television entertainment, broadband services, satellite-based private business networks, and global video data broadcasting. The earning of HUGHES are used to calculate the earnings attributable to General Motors Class H common stock (NYSE:GMH).

NOTE: HUGHES Electronics Corporation believes that some of the foregoing statements may constitute forward-looking statements. When used in this report, the words "estimate," "plan," "project," "anticipate," "expect," "intend," "outlook," "believe," and other similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements and information. Important factors that may cause actual results of HUGHES to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this report are set forth in the Form 10-Ks filed with the SEC by General Motors and HUGHES.