Dan Akerson, General Motors Co.’s fourth CEO in 18 months, has to convince investors the automaker’s turnaround has staying power, Bloomberg reported.

Announced yesterday to succeed Ed Whitacre on Sept. 1, it’s Akerson who will be the face of the automaker as it embarks on a public stock offering to repay the U.S. Treasury for its $50 billion bailout. He will be selling a company that posted two straight quarters of profit after $88 billion in losses in the four years before it declared bankruptcy 14 months ago.

“He’s got one more good run in him,” said Steven Rattner, who led GM’s reorganization when he ran President Barack Obama’s Automotive Task Force and served on the Ziff-Davis Inc. board with Akerson. “As someone who has lived in the corporate world, this is as exciting an opportunity as there could be.”

The IPO, which may be filed as soon as today, may raise as much as $16 billion, making it the second-largest in U.S. history, said a person familiar with the plans. Akerson got the job after the board and bankers pressed Whitacre, 68, to commit to spending several more years at GM in order to help promote the IPO, three people with direct knowledge of the talks said.

The 61-year-old Akerson, who was born in California and grew up in Minnesota, graduated from the Naval Academy and served on Navy destroyers before working for telecommunications companies.

“He would tell you to this day that the defining experience of his life was the four years he spent at the Naval Academy,” said Todd Wolfenbarger, who worked for Akerson as a spokesman at XO Communications Inc. “He looks at General Motors as something that is deeply embedded in who the country is, and that will always have a huge appeal to Dan.”

Wolfenbarger described Akerson, whom he expects will move from suburban Washington to Detroit, as a family man. He is married with three grown children. He also owns a Cadillac CTS, according to GM.

He spent a decade at MCI Communications Corp., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. He was chairman and CEO of General Instrument Corp., Nextel Communications Inc. and Nextlink Communications Inc., which became XO Communications Inc.

“Dan is a guy who is more a person you would want when you want to change things a lot,” said Craig McCaw, chairman of Eagle River Holdings LLC. “When I wanted to make big changes in the way Nextel worked, I did come to Dan and ask him to do it. And I think he did that.”