After tidying up the executive ranks, new General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre set about in serious to appoint a new chief financial officer. Today the company announced it has found one in the ranks at Microsoft. Chris Liddell will take over as GM vice chairman and CFO, effective Jan 2010. Liddell has been the CFO of Microsoft since May 2005.

Liddell takes over for current CFO Ray Young, who fell out of favor when the President's automotive taskforce ordered into GM for its poor financial management. Young has been reassigned as CFO of GM's international operations and will be relocating from Detroit to Shanghai.

Before coming to Microsoft, Liddell was the CFO of International Paper, and before that, he was the CEO of Carter Holt Harvey Ltd., a paper products company in New Zealand. Liddell is a native New Dane and holds an engineering degree from the University of Auckland, plus a masters in philosophy from Oxford University in England.