General Motors may have been hoping to put prior controversies behind it as the automaker looks to the future.

But another storm is brewing. This one involves activist investors who want the company to buy back $8 billion or more worth of GM stock by 2016.

And Harry J. Wilson, who has worked for Goldman Sachs and President Barack Obama’s Auto Industry Task Force (where he assisted on the bailout of GM), will run for the GMs board in an effort to get the buy-back plan in place.

He has four hedge funds on his side. Harry Wilson, backed by hedge funds Taconic, Appaloosa, HG Vora, and Hayman, wants that cash [from dividends] returned to shareholders by buying back $8 billion worth of GM stock, which reduces the number of shares outstanding, and theoretically increases the stock price, Christopher Hewitt, an attorney with Tucker Ellis, explained in a statement to InsideCounsel. The hedge funds would sell their GM stock after the stock price rises, making a profit on the stock.

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Given that the hedge funds have 34.4 million shares, they dont have to move the stock price much to make a lot of money, Hewitt added.

He also pointed out that Wilson reached an agreement with the hedge funds that if they support his board candidacy, they will share their profit with him.

Running a proxy contest simply to cause a company to return money to shareholders via a stock repurchase, i.e. financial engineering, as opposed to true operational changes, is Activist Investing 101. There is no creativity to this approach, Hewitt said.

In addition, because of the record number of safety recalls during last year and related expenses GM net income for 2014 was $2.8 billion, which works out to a 31 percent decline from $3.99 billion in 2013.

We want to help the company go from where it is today to where it should be, a world-class performer on any metric, Wilson recently told The New York Times.

Meanwhile, in response to Wilsons move, GM released a statement that its board and management team are committed to acting in the best interests of all shareholders and are always open to constructive ideas to enhance shareholder value.

The company is currently successfully executing the plan to build a strong and sustainable business for the long term. It described its Q4 results as strong and noted the strong core operating performance for the year, the first under the leadership of CEO Mary Barra, despite significant challenges faced by the company and the industry. Also, GM expects a 20 percent increase in its quarterly dividend, to 36 cents per share.

As the company gets more clarity on several business open items related to recalls, it expects to continue to evaluate further return of capital to shareholders as soon as the second half of this year, the company statement adds.