“Mr. Liddell, whose departure from Microsoft was announced last month, is the highest-ranking executive hired by G.M. under Edward E. Whitacre Jr., the automaker’s chairman and interim chief executive,” Bunkley reports.His selection comes about three months after G.M.’s directors decided to replace Ray Young, who has been chief financial officer since March 2008.”
Bunkley reports, “Mr. Liddell, 51, became Microsoft’s chief financial officer in 2005 after holding the same position at International Paper Company. He has also been chief executive at a forestry products company in his native New Zealand and an investment banker, but has no automotive experience. He will join G.M. on Jan. 1, about six months after the automaker emerged from bankruptcy protection.”
“He earned $3.7 million from Microsoft in the 2009 fiscal year and will receive $1.9 million after leaving the company. He will earn considerably less at G.M., at least initially, because the company must adhere to executive pay limits tied to the $50 billion it borrowed from the federal government in the past year,” Bunkley reports. “Among his expected responsibilities at G.M. will be to oversee a public stock offering as soon as next year. Proceeds from an offering would help the government, which owns 60 percent of G.M., collect some of the money it lent.”
Bunkley reports, “G.M. on Friday made a $1 billion payment toward the $6.7 billion in government debt that remained on its balance sheet.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is like jumping off the Titanic and landing on the deck of the Andrea Doria.
“…tied to the $50 billion it [was FORCED to] borrow(ed) from the federal government..”
Can anyone say, ‘UAW Payola’? I thought you could…
Well that’s a story that has nothing to do with Apple in any way, shape or form given that Liddell ceased to be involved in Apple’s orbit in November.
I’m not sure I cared about Chris Liddell even when he was MSFT’s CFO, but I’m pretty darn certain I don’t care about him now.
@MDN Take:
Yeah, if the rescued passenger is the Titanic’s XO
Why would you hire someone from Microsoft?
Perhaps GM are considering stealing technology, engaging in predatory price practices and manipulative marketing strategies, monopolistic behaviour (in their dreams), taking on the EU or manufacturing their own iPod-killer?
And of course he knows all about the car business?
I’ll definitely never own a GM product… You got Obama owning the company and a former MS guy heading it up. ‘Nuf said!!!
Forced? You mean after the business leadership drove the company into the ground? That kind of forced?
Clearly, they had a choice just like all the other losers who took handouts.
Fsck Wall Street, the Fed, the Treasury, and the corporate communists who took the goverment cheese!
Blue Wind-screen of Death, Anyone?
“He earned $3.7 million …”
Earned?
I, for one, am glad to see new blood at GM. I know that, having been associated with with the Borg, Chris Liddell must be vilified on this site, but he was brought in at Microsoft in 2005 to cut costs and he did so. Let’s hope he can help make remake into GM a lean, competitive company. With Bob Lutz as design chief, GM’s products have become very good, I’ve driven them recently. Let’s hear it for a resurgence in the American automotive industry. In ’98 Apple was on the brink of death, now it’s an industry leader. Hopefully, the same can happen at GM.
“General Motors appointed Christopher P. Liddell, who led a $3 billion cost-cutting effort at Microsoft, as its chief financial officer on Monday”
I’m presuming they let him take Tuesday off.
What is wrong with this picture? Liddel said he does not want to be a CFO anymore. Has been said to have CEO aspirations. Yet he resigns from higher paid job and takes lower paid and more riskier job as CFO again. Am I the only one puzzled by this?
This is a guy who worked for a company (MS) that had to do cost cutting in order to make a profit, rather than truly innovate and control cost along the way. And he gets credit for the cost cutting! Part of the serious problem with GM and other American auto manufactures was too much cost cutting and not enough innovation and cost control along the way. This is not to say that the ridiculous UAW work rules (note: work rules were the issue more so than salaries) didn’t also contribute to the problems. The need for cost cutting, in my estimation, has always been a result of poor management and resultant control. As a result, it should never be praised but despised as it indicates poor management and controls.
It still seems that the powers that be think that Microsoft and anyone attached to it is some sort of beacon of good business practice and success. Truth is that if that were the case he wouldn’t have been employed by Microsoft in the first place and there is precious little indication that he has shown that ever whitening elephant the error of its ways. Expect him to jump ship at GM before his lack of success is evident there too. Maybe this guy isn’t so incompetent after all… from a personal perspective anyway.
Part of GM’s problem for the past few decades has been that it kept promoting from within because it wanted “car guys.” Well, the car guys kept submitting car designs and decisions to committees which needed multiple focus groups before any decision could be reached. It also kept giving away the farm to the unions, while having to support the health care and retirement systems put in place in the 1960s instead of blowing them up and reworking them. Then the bean counters got in on the act, hence the 1980s full of GM cars which differed only in color and badges.
I don’t know about Liddell’s pedigree, but hiring someone from outside of GM can only help the company. It can’t get much lower anyway. The sad thing is that it took SOOOOOO long for GM to wake up and smell the bankruptcy and rotting stock prices. The sad thing is that I don’t know that the $50B did anything to help GM, since it filed for bankruptcy protection anyway. Should have just done that in the first place and not become Obama Motors. At least then it would have some flexibility on who it could hire for its management positions (not that wise decisions were made in the past).
From Train Wreck to Car Wreck?
Bizlaw
Let me get this right. You wouldn’t want anyone or any organization that you work for maybe 30 or 40 years helping you with health care or retirement?
Wow, a company that is firing people and borrow(ed) from the federal government is hiring another company’s CFO that also is firing people and borrow(ed) from the federal government….
Keep buying Microsoft Products and GM cars, what you don’t pay as initial cost, you will pay it as cost of ownership and taxes that this company will borrow from the government.
@Fandango – are you insane?
The only thing that “forced” any company to take $$ from the government, was their own gross incompetence.
Personally, I think we should have let them fail – market correcting itself and all…
I worry about this guy going to GM…
MS today is very much GM 50 years ago — no real need to do well since there’s no significant competitor for the meat & potatoes of it’s business.
…time shall tell.
The article mentions that GM is planning a public stock offer. Well, anyone insane enough to buy into a GM stock offer deserves to lose his shirt. I hope GM takes a dive and takes its executives and UAW leeches and along with it.
THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
This one is a little different… . Two Different Versions…. ………. …. Two Different Morals
OLD VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010
Same old conservative bullshit in a different wrapper.
Liddell worked for a moron at Microshaft, and works for a moron at GM. Whitaker knows nothing about cars, just running around trying new guys because things haven’t dramatically improved under old guys in 6 months.
LOOK at the job Mulally has done at Ford. He’s done it without dumping everyone and turning the company inside out.
He actually laid out a STRATEGY, hows that for you Whitaker, an actual strategy, instead of “increased market share right away”!!!
Strategy at Ford
Technology, (now the acknowledged leader even though it was with Microshafts help)
Safety – Moving into the top positions
Efficiency – Ecoboost engines and improved transmissions moving Ford into top positions. Hybrids second only to Toyota.
Design – much improved.
Brands – Define and invest in nameplates (hence reviving Taurus name) If you brand correctly, like Toyota, you don’t kill off nameplates you have spend millions of dollars developing. Camry, Corolla, Accord, Civic.
These names have been around for decades. That’s how to get the bank for your buck out of advertising.
Hey Whitacre, why not pull out a new name and kill off another existing nameplate? Idiots at GM. (And I have loved GM cars my whole life). Last ten years have been horrendous.
@ chaz: true about the leadership, wrong about the assumption that Ford suddenly leapt ahead.
Who bases their car-buying on the personality and experience of the CEO, anyway? Don’t fanboys take any objective data into account???
Mulally staved off FoMoCo bankruptcy, true, but the other U.S. automakers ended up with the better financing deals. Mulally has modestly improved the Ford lineup, but not nearly as much as GM. Whitacre is just a CEO cheerleader. Lutz is pushing the car lineup, and it is getting better all the time. Head-to-head, GM has actually done a heck of a lot better in its engineering in the last few years. Those in the know say they’d take a Buick Lacrosse or Chevy Malibu ahead of the Taurus, Camry, or Accord. Of course, most consumers still treat cars like a fashion industry, so your choice may vary. Still, you must drive them and find out for yourself, rather than personalizing the auto industry.
Ford made the mistake of engaging MS to architect its entertainment electronics, Sync. Bad idea. Apple ought to work with all other automakers to fit proper iPod docks on the dashboards, which is far more desireable than messing around with bluetooth.
@mike
Wrong about Mulally, Ford improvement has been dramatic and steady and he’s been the guy behind it. Financing was set up just before he arrived, so he can’t take credit for it. Don LeClaire, former CFO was best CFO in auto industry in last 25 years.
Ford has taken huge steps, like world platforms, not just in some parts, but entire nameplates. Just like Toyota and Honda sell Accord, Civic, Corolla in every market around the world. GM still doesn’t get it. Vaxhall and Opel in Europe, no global nameplates, no common design and engineering. Still way too costly. Can’t disagree about the Union though, they still don’t get it. They think with Obama in the white house they have govt protection. Look at the carve out for union health plans in the soon to be health care bill. About as unamerican as you can get. (enough politics, not meant to be obama basher, just policy basher)
I own a 2009 malibu LTZ, not crazy about it. Lacks some key features that simply aren’t available, like Memory fobs that set the seat, radio, heat/air, mirrors, etc. between drivers other electroncis aren’t up to snuff (lack of display of info,have to toggle through) and gas mileage is well below what I had hoped for. Bought it in the middle of bankruptcy and deal was thousands less than I could get a Ford for, or I would have bought Ford then. Except for my lust to buy a Corvette, (which will be used) I’ve bought my last GM car.
Really wish I had waited for the taurus.