A former GM CFO has been appointed assistant to the president and director of strategic initiatives in the incoming Trump administration. Chris Liddell earlier joined GM early in 2010 and quit 15 months later, reportedly in part because he was passed over for the CEO role at the automaker post-bankruptcy.
Liddell most recently was global sports, entertainment and media agency WME-IMG’s chief financial officer, according to the Hollywood Reporter. He had said when leaving GM: “I’ve done most of what I hoped to achieve as CFO and it’s time to move on. “I won’t be a CFO again. I’ve been CFO at a few companies now and I feel like I’ve achieved all I can achieve in that role.”
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Trump’s relationship with WME-IMG reaches back to his days hosting The Apprentice, when co-CEO Ari Emanuel was his agent, the report said.
Variety reported Liddell has served as a special adviser on appointments during the presidential transition and, citing a Trump announcement, would head up what will be known within the White House as the Strategic Development Group, which will focus on unnamed “priority projects”. It will also be his job to interface with “private sector forums”. Along with another appointee, Reed Cordish, the duo will oversee a series of “high impact task forces”, Trump’s announcement said.
Variety added that, prior to joining WME-IMG, New Zealand-native Liddell had served as CFO of Microsoft, General Motors, and International Paper. Trump said in a statement that the executive and his fellow appointee “have led large, complex companies in the private sector, and have played instrumental roles throughout the transition”. He added: “Their skill sets are exactly what is needed to effect substantial change, including system wide improvement to the performance of the government. I am delighted that they will be part of my executive team.”
Liddell wrote The Romney Readiness Project after being executive director of the transition preparatory team during the 2012 US elections, nzedge.com reported.
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By GlobalDataHe led GM’s US$23bn Initial Public Offering when CFO and vice president. The IPO was the largest-ever at the time. He re-organised the company’s finances and stabilised the company.
According to nzedge.com, as early as August 2015 Liddell predicted a Trump win in the presidential election. In a November 2016 interview with TVNZ about his role in the Trump transition he said that the election of Trump is “one of the most significant events in my lifetime… this is Brexit times 10. It’s a lot of the same issues. Brexit wasn’t a vote for whether you were in or out of the EU. It was a vote against the establishment government and the inability of the current government configuration to solve the big issues of our time.
“When you look at those big issues, if you aren’t solving the inequality issue; if you aren’t dealing with the hollowing out of the middle class; if you aren’t facing big issues which affect people emotionally, like immigration, then you are blind to the big issues that we’re dealing with…so I think you are going to see trade protectionism and driving towards jobs for the middle class, and retraining in the middle class is going to be one of the big policies of any successful government going forward…The way in which President Trump and his administration address those issues, not all that hyperbole, that will define whether they’re successful or not.”
