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By Matthew Quinn
It's often difficult to summarize the tenure of a chief financial officer. Some leave behind a legacy of merger integration. Others took a hatchet to costs.
For Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell, who will be leaving the company at the end of the year, his roughly four and a half years at the software giant were highlighted by an intense period of returning cash to shareholders.
In announcing Liddell's departure on Tuesday, Microsoft noted that the company "returned $14 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buy-back" in its past fiscal year.
Overall, during his time at Microsoft, Liddell oversaw the return of $86 billion to shareholders through $68.8 billion in stock buybacks and $17.2 billion in dividends.
On March 31, 2005, just before Liddell joined the company from International Paper, Microsoft had $37.6 billion in cash and short-term securities on its balance sheet, representing almost 57 percent of its $66.3 billion in assets. As of Sept. 30, 2009, Microsoft held $36.7 billion in cash and short-term securities, or about 45 percent of all assets.
Liddell also engineered the company's first debt offering ever earlier this year, raising $3.75 billion to help fund share repurchases and make technology investments.
Microsoft said, "he is looking at a number of opportunities that will expand his career beyond being a CFO."
The 51-year-old and native New Zealander Liddell certainly has the resume to take on the top job at any number of companies: he joined Microsoft in May 2005 after serving as CFO at International Paper and chief executive officer of Carter Holt Harvey, then New Zealand's second-largest listed company.
Liddell is being replaced by Peter Klein, current CFO of Microsoft Business Division. Klein has been at Microsoft since 2002, running finance for that division for the past four years and the server and tools division for the three years before that. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent 13 years in corporate finance, primarily in the communications and technology industries.
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