Los Angeles Times - The top financial executive who guided General Motors through its public stock offering and much of its return to sustained profits stepped down suddenly Thursday.
GM Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell, who worked at the automaker only since January of 2010, said he had achieved his goals for the company and no longer wanted to be a CFO.
"I won't be a CFO again," Liddell said.
GM's board passed over Liddell in its search for a new chief executive last year when Edward E. Whitacre Jr. quit, settling on Dan Akerson instead.
"I don't have any specific plans," Liddell said. "I have a number of interesting ideas in the back of mind and none of them have CFO on them."
In morning trading, GM shares fell $1, or 3%, to $31.25. It is now trading below the $33 price the shares sold for when company went public in November.
Last month, GM posted its first annual profit in six years. GM earned $4.7 billion, compared with a loss of $21 billion a year earlier. It was a dramatic turnaround from the 2005-2009 period, during which the automaker lost $100 billion. Annual sales increased almost 30% to $135.6 billion from $104.6 billion in 2009.
Dan Ammann will succeed Liddell as of April 1. Ammann, 38, is GM's vice president for finance and its treasurer. Before joining GM a year ago, Ammann was a managing director and investment banker at Morgan Stanley.
Akerson said that Ammann and Liddell have worked closely together, share the same financial strategy and outlook and that the transition should be "seamless."
He praised Liddell for "setting a solid financial foundation for GM."
The sudden resignation continues a churn of senior employees at GM, which underwent a bankruptcy restructuring and government bailout in 2009. The federal government still owns a 27% stake in GM, when all of the outstanding options for shares held by various parties are included.
Whitacre resigned in August and was succeeded by Akerson, a GM board member and a top executive at Carlyle Group.
Whitacre initially took GM's helm in December as an interim chief executive after the board pushed out longtime insider Fritz Henderson, who himself had been on the job for only eight months. Henderson had been named to GM's top job in March after his predecessor, Rick Wagoner, was ousted by President Obama's auto task force.
In January, the Detroit automaker said Mary Barra would become senior vice president of global product development and be responsible for the design, engineering and vehicle quality of the company's 11 brands around the world.
Barra stepped into a position that was held by longtime GM executive and vice chairman Thomas Stephens, who was named global chief technology officer by Akerson.
Stephens had served as product development chief for only a short time. He took over the post two years ago when industry guru Robert Lutz retired after a long career at GM and other automakers.
