Former Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell plans to resign as CFO of General Motors after getting passed over for the top executive post at the Detroit auto maker. According to a report by The Associated Press, Liddell — who hails from New Zealand and spent four years at Microsoft — served just 15 months at GM.
Liddell helped turn GM around, driving the company back to profitability.
“I have a number of interesting ideas which I have in the back of my mind, but none of them have CFO on it,” said Liddell during a conference call.
Liddell had a solid reputation at Microsoft, which led a Bloomberg News reporter in this video report to speculate that the software giant might consider bringing him back. The reporter noted:
“We often talk about the exodus from Microsoft these days, the place where Chris Liddell left. They have lost a whole host of executives. They lost Stephen Elop, of course, to Nokia recently. That actually raises the question: Would Microsoft be interested in bringing somebody like Chris Liddell back, after what has arguably been the impressive job he has done at GM shepherding them through the IPO process?”
Hmm. Not sure how current Microsoft CFO Peter Klein would feel about that?
Anyway, Liddell said in today’s conference call that he’s not really interested in being a CFO, which probably means he’s on the prowl for a CEO post. The fact that he left after getting passed over at GM also reinforces that theory.
Here’s the full press release on Liddell’s departure from GM.
