Chris Liddell, named new GM CFO, to start this January

General Motors today just announced that Chris Liddell (Wikipedia profile), 51, would become the new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at GM starting in January.

The announcement comes as GM makes yet another important change to its top management following changes pushed by the Obama administration.

Chris Liddell is currently the CFO at Microsoft, but will be stepping down by the end of this year as he makes on the top finance job at GM in January.

Liddell has been credited with cutting about $3 billion in total costs at Microsoft to better position the company in the global economic downturn mainly by developing a massive cost cutting plan that saw up to 5,000 job cuts at the tech giant. The job cuts alone was expected to saved the company $1.5 billion.

Most recently, Microsoft announced better than expected Q3 earnings ($3.6 billion in profits) thanks to Liddell implementing new cost structure changes.

Liddell now faces the difficult task of revaluing balance sheet items post restructuring and the massive U.S. bailout with emergency loans.