New Zealander's Chris Liddell is being touted as a future chief executive of the biggest United States automaker, General Motors Co.
A former chief executive at timber company Carter Holt Harvey Ltd, Mr Liddell has just taken on the role of chief financial officer at GM, which includes the huge chore of repaying $US6.9 billion in government debt and leading an initial public offering.
"If he performs as advertised, he's probably got a terrific shot at becoming the CEO," Joseph Phillippi, president of AutoTrends Consulting in Short Hills, New Jersey, told the Bloomberg newsagency.
Mr Liddell, who was with Microsoft Corp, faces the challenge of resurrecting the finances of a company that lost $US88 billion from 2004 until filing for bankruptcy re-organisation on June 1.
And he will have to oversee the "float" of the Detroit-based carmaker that is now 61 percent owned by the US taxpayers.
Liddell helped turn Microsoft around when software sales plummeted in the recession, and Bill Koefoed, Microsoft's general manager of investor relations said the New Zealander viewed his GM job as attacking "arguably one of the biggest challenges that exist in North America".
"This is a huge opportunity to-in Chris's words-re-engineer the whole auto industry, make it successful and bring it back to life in North America," he said in the Bloomberg report published on the businessweek.com website.
Mr Liddell has an engineering degree from the University of Auckland and a Master's in philosophy from Oxford University.
A former director of the New Zealand Rugby Union, Mr Liddell (51) brought a former All Blacks captain to speak to Microsoft finance executives and workers.
Before joining Microsoft in 2005, Mr Liddell was finance chief at International Paper Co. (IP), the world's largest papermaker. He was previously chief executive at Carter Holt Harvey.
