General Motors Co. finance chief Chris Liddell, who was passed over for the top job at the automaker last year, is leaving the company.
Liddell, 52, who joined GM last year from software giant Microsoft Corp, will leave on April 1, the company said on Thursday. Its shares fell as much as 4 percent to their lowest price since GM's initial public stock offering.
Liddell saw GM through the record $23 billion IPO last November, after the company emerged from a government-sponsored bankruptcy. Replacing him is former Morgan Stanley banker Dan Ammann, who is now GM's finance vice president and treasurer.
"This decision is really one that (Chief Executive Officer) Dan Akerson and I have been talking about for the last week or so, and then I made the decision earlier this week," Liddell told reporters on a conference call.
"It really doesn't predate that," he added. "There is no wider context. I've done to a large extent what I wanted as CFO, and it's time to move on."
Last month, GM posted a full-year profit that was its first since 2004 and its largest since 1999, but its shares fell below the IPO price as investor concerns shifted to rising oil prices and higher costs of launching and selling new cars.
Liddell left Microsoft, where he was CFO, in November 2009 to look for a bigger job. When he joined GM, he was seen as a well-regarded outsider who could possibly succeed then-CEO Ed Whitacre when he stepped aside.
Liddell had previously made it clear that this was his ambition, and he repeated on Thursday that he had no interest in being a CFO at another company.
GM's board considered both Liddell and former Morgan Stanley banker Steve Girsky, now the company's vice chairman, as CEO candidates to succeed Whitacre after his sudden resignation last August on the brink of the IPO, people with knowledge of the process said. But the board concluded that neither was the right fit at that time, prompting Akerson, 62, to step aside as a director and take the job himself.
Akerson said Liddell was a leader in GM's IPO as well running the finances through four consecutive profitable quarters. Liddell and Ammann were "the dynamic duo" in leading the company's finances, the CEO said, adding that he expected a seamless transition.
Analysts have credited Liddell with a lot of the IPO's success. He also won over investors with promises to reduce debt to zero and build a "fortress balance sheet" that would protect GM during the inevitable downturns in the highly cyclical automotive industry.
However, 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.
Ammann, 38, joined GM in March 2010. Also a native of New Zealand, he and Liddell have known each other about 20 years.
Prior to GM, Ammann was managing director and head of industrials investment banking at Morgan Stanley, where he was a key adviser to the automaker during its restructuring.
His successor in the treasurer's office will be announced at a later date.
GM shares were down 2.2 percent at $31.54 in morning trading. Earlier, the stock hit a post-IPO low of $30.95, 6 percent below its IPO opening value of $33.00 and 22 percent below its high of $39.47 reached in January.