Motorola Names New CFO, Still Has No Potential Buyers

Motorola named Paul J. Liska as its new chief financial officer. As CFO, Mr. Liska will report directly to Greg Brown, who took over as Motorola's CEO on New Year's Day after Motorola's long time CEO, Ed Zander, stepped down amid concerns for the health of Motorola's Mobile Devices unit. Mr. Liska formerly served as a partner for several private equity firms and was at one time the executive chairman of US Freightways.

It seems likely that one of the tasks that Mr. Liska will be charged with is that of working to find another company that is willing to buy Motorola's beleaguered Mobile Devices unit. Motorola announced earlier this month that it was considering many options for the future of the company, including separating some of its business units, such as Mobile Devices, into separate companies. Wall Street took this as a sign that Motorola was looking to sell, but major industry players such as Nokia, Samsung, and LG have all said that they are not interested in buying.

There might be more reasons for that than initially thought, though. It seems that China's Huawei Technologies was looking to purchase U.S. networking company 3Com, but that the U.S. government's Committee on Foreign Investment killed any potential deal, citing security concerns. It is easy to see a scenario where the same fate would fall on any would-be Motorola suitor, and that might be one of the reasons that no company has publicly stepped up and said that it was interested in buying Motorola's Mobile Devices unit.

Analysts believe this is part of the reason behind the downward slide of Motorola's stock price, which has fallen about 25% in the past 3 months.