Liddell in shock GM resignation; replaced by another Kiwi
ABOVE: Mr Liddell with Sir Don McKinnon during a recent Auckland visit.
Chris Liddell - arguably New Zealand's highest profile businesman - has resigned as General Motors CFO, just four months after leading a triumphant IPO. He joined GM in January last year.
Mr Liddell (52) - a former NZRU director and frequent vistor to NZ - moved to GM from Microsoft, where he was also chief financial officer, and highly regarded for his efforts to trim costs and boost the company's cash position during the global financial crisis.
The move is a surprise.
Passed over?
Although short, Mr Liddell's stint at GM was studded with highlights. The expatriate presided over GM's successful post-bankruptcy IPO, and the associated retirement of $US11 billion in debt. The company also reported its first full-year profit since 2004.
The New York Times reported this morning that Mr Liddell had been widely expected to be among the top candidates when the chief executive role next came up for grabs.
But in a conference call to media, Mr Liddell gave no explanation for his departure, beyond saying that he had achieved what he wanted to in the role.
He said his resignation was not a result of being passed over ahead of Christmas when the board choose Daniel Akerson as new GM's new CEO.
Nor was it a sign that there was financial turbulance ahead, he said. GM investors were not so sure, and the company's shares (NYSE: GM) were down 2.76% in late trading.
Another Kiwi replaces him
As fate would have it, Mr Liddell's replacement, Dan Ammann (38), is another Kiwi.
Mr Ammann (right) currently heads the GM Treasurer´s Office, based in New York.
Before joining GM, Mr Ammann was managing director and head of Industrial Investment Banking for Morgan Stanley. He also spent five years at Credit Suisse in New York and his native New Zealand, where he gained a first class honours degree in Economics and Finance from the University of Waikato.
The Kiwi-replacing-Kiwi promotion seems no accident. Mr Liddell hired Mr Ammann to NZ First Capital in the 1990s, and has been his mentor ever since.
Fonterra beckons?
Mr Liddell told the conference call audience that he had “a couple of ideas I’ve been working on” but no specific plans of what he will do next.
But one element is certain.
“I don’t want to be a chief financial officer again,” Mr Liddell said. “I’ve been chief financial officer now of a few public companies, and I really feel like I’ve achieved all I could achieve in the role.”
Read: I want to be a chief executive.
The question now: of which company? (NBR readers - see below - were quick to take a guess at Fonterra. But the Kiwi A-leaguer may also find he has the pick of US blue chips).
One factor - Mr Liddell separated from his wife during his time at GM. NBR understands his new partner is keen on him spending more time in New Zealand.
Our corporate culture could be another attraction.
According to a Reuters report, the one-time Carter Holt-Harvey boss was never comfortable at GM, running the unsourced comment that "the native of New Zealand was an odd fit at a company that is still deeply American at the top, and he sometimes appeared cold to people who worked with him."
ABOVE: Liddell with Don McKinnon during a recent Auckland visit.
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Comments and questions33
fonterra
Tomasi beat me to it - Fonterra has to be the pick?
Note that Liddells replacement is also a Kiwi.
fonterra or Hart's Bev Pack Holdings?
NZX ?
NZX is too small. It would have to be big so if it was NZ, the only 'company' big enough would be Fonterra, Telecom, Flether or mayble looking after Harts entities.
The only one that has an openning in Fonterra. Having said that, there must be many more options in the US.
Wow this guy is just so impressive, would be great to have him back in NZ one day.
Allied Farmers, maybe?
Maybe a political career in NZ? He'd quickly become John Key's heir apparent as National Party leader.
could be a good replacement for mark weldon. tho any monkey would.
What if John Key tapped him to head up a new aspirational agency such as NZ Inc. or even the Christchurch rebuild. The Chch deal is a 10 year $30 Billion enterprise, and JK has said that to kick it off quickly would need government money upfront, before the insurance funds came in. That's a serious responsibilty for a man of this calibre.
he obviously has many skills which would benefit NZ in whatever role he chooses in our drive to fix our economy
liberte
Seems you've all forgotten his major contribution to the Leaky Building scandal.....Have you all forgotten about UNTREATED timber????
He gets the credit for that scam which pulled a couple of timber companies out of the dwang in the early 90s.
The only way he should be allowed back here is to do PENANCE and take over the role of Quake Fix Tsar.
And having scammed the building industry and hundreds of thousands of victims, he will at least know what NOT to do.
The current mob fixing (sic) this are clueless.
Message for Liddell: Any chancer can be a CFO: to be a CEO you need values and ethics, and stand scrutiny. The quake fix would beat the billion "Our Fathers" you owe to clear your conscience.
Chris joined Carter Holt Harvey in the late 1990's so was not involved in the formation of the leaky home crisis
maybe a subway franchisee
yeah.. i guess most big company men can't run a small business so he would then be able to complete the full picture
Maybe he's the succession plan for:
A) Berkshire Hathaway
B) Apple
C) Costco
It wasnt the wood that caused the leaky buildings it was the shoddy design and building stds.
I'd pick leading a US or European company over a return to NZ
Simon Power becomes new head of NZX, Mark Weldon goes to Fonterra; Liddell becomes new minister of justice
He is coming home to help keep the Feltex scandal covered up I suspect.
Both of them worked together for First Capital NZ in Wellington 1995 so they have known each other before. Well done to you both.
yes i remember this guy back in 1995 in wellington...pretty arrogant...hopefully he has matured
you worked with him?
You have to spare a thought for the ex wife, if/when Chris leaves the US her meal ticket and only claim to fame will be out of sight & out of mind.....
Dont worry about Bridget, there will be a cushy trade commissioner posting somewhere for her.
The fonterra CEO job is going to someone who will ensure that Fonterra acts ethically and in a responsible way.........Penny Bright should get the job.
You're all a bunch of scaremongers..rumours have it rife he's taking Julia Gillard's job and will amalgamate Oz as an island off NZ.
Come back to NZ, Chris. I'd work for/with you.
Cold. Bang on. Another company man with a big ego and an inflated idea of himself. Probably competent but he can stay away from here and we won't notice the diff.
Couple of updates to remove confusion: Leaky Houses aka Rotting Houses.....ROT 'cos the timber ain't treated. That not only saved money, it cut out the separate runs for timber for NZ and timber for Aus. A concocted "research paper" by a certain Mr Cavanagh at CHH "proved" that the climate/ buidling conditions/characteristics in Aust and here were the same....i.e. no need to treat/ cut costs.
That was approved by a board that included a recent near miss for G-G, chaired by another knight and the man in question. He was CFO '95-8; CEO thereafter.
Let's just say it was during the high-season for leaky building construction.
For those slagging Mrs Liddell -- some perspective from hard-nosed Bill Ralston
For those slagging
Features
Movin on up The Listener 2009
by Bill Ralston
High-flying businesswoman Bridget Liddell wants a group of "power women" to help get more females into top roles in New Zealand companies.
The sound of a hairdryer was drowning out the words from one of New Zealand’s more successful businesswomen. When the deafening whine mercifully stopped, it was still a little hard to make out what she was saying through stretched lips as a make-up artist applied a coating of lipstick. When being interviewed, most top executives or board members tend to reach first for a balance sheet or annual report rather than a hairbrush or blusher but, then, this is the essential difference we are here to talk about.
Bridget Liddell is a managing principal in a New York-based venture company that, she tells me, is responsible for “commercialising new concepts and building brands” in North America.
She is the genuine article, a Kiwi high-flier footing it on the international business stage while also chairing the NZ/US Beachhead Programme, a Government initiative to help New Zealand companies get a foothold in the US market. As a director of the NZ Superannuation Fund, Liddell finds time to look after our savings. She has had several board positions on local public companies and you might have heard of her a few years back when she was central in organising the Knowledge Wave Trust. It may be just a ripple these days but, at the time, that role underlined her position as one of the country’s prime movers and shakers.
Sitting in a poky storeroom at Auckland’s Sky Convention Centre, getting a quick makeover for our photo shoot, Liddell has ducked out of a venture capital conference just before Finance Minister Bill English is due to give his speech. She knows the building fairly well because until she headed to the US, she was a director of Sky City Ltd.
“Lack of imagination,” she declares. “I think it’s lack of leadership, lack of maybe enough role models, people who are actually pointing out the problem. I don’t think the male leadership has seen the real opportunity represented by these very, very talented women who might need a little more support in the short term.”
She’s talking about the lack of women in top roles in New Zealand companies and what can be done about it. Liddell is one of more than 20 businesswomen speaking at the upcoming Thinking Globally forum, run by the recently formed NZ Global Women. It is a group of more than 80 New Zealand “power women” and includes former prime ministers, CEOs, board members and some multimillionaires. Its aim is to correct that gender imbalance in corporate- and public-sector leadership.
“An old-boys’ network for girls” is a biting line I get back in an email from a female friend who is a successful international lawyer working abroad in the financial sector. She is not part of this network and sounds cynical about it. This hardbitten offshore lawyer has met Liddell, respects her and exempts her from her criticism, but she is more jaundiced about some of the other Global Women, which may be why she won’t let me use her name.
“While there are genuine entrepreneurial self-started businesswomen in the mix of apparently 80 members, many are just service providers, public-sector appointees or the beneficiaries of a careful marriage to a more powerful man” is her frosty summation from afar.
She emphasised she was not having a crack at Liddell, who was married to Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft. Bridget Liddell’s successful career as a manager and leader was well advanced prior to that marriage. Yet I note, by the way, that in all the archived press clippings about Liddell over the past decade, every story mentioned her in relation to her husband. “Bridget Wickham Liddell, wife of ...” That kind of condescension, being treated as an appendage despite your own high level of achievement, would rankle most people.
Such annoyance is not apparent in Liddell but it may be a factor in her desire to see many more women get to the top of the corporate ladder. That will not be an easy task. The number of female top executives in this country is actually declining and there are only 54 women out of a total 624 board directors in publicly listed companies.
There is only one female CEO in New Zealand’s top 100 companies, Liddell points out. “That just defies belief. That is not representative of the number of women who go into careers, who are incredibly talented. More than half the output of universities are women. It’s just not happening.”
In fact, I later discover, she has understated the facts because some two-thirds of the bachelor degrees granted in this country last year went to women. They qualify, they enter a career and then, somehow, they fail to reach the top. That is the infamous “glass ceiling” and there are plenty of theories about why it exists and how to overcome it.
For Liddell, mentoring holds part of the answer. She pays tribute to people like former Carter Holt Harvey boss Dave Oskin, who helped launch her management career. “Outstanding, he gave me every single opportunity I could have wanted.” She also cites financial analyst Brian Gaynor, who helped in her early years in banking.
“People need to reach out to people who they think have a chance of making it” is how she defines the need for better mentoring.
Non Frankfurt School motivated (or infected) women should rise to the top ranks.
Ruth Llewellyn
Women NOT Wimmin
For 1 of 124
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How goes it Penny?
Bridget Liddell has zero credibility among American execs. She latches to the coattails of her kiwi friends in NY.