Xero bolsters its board and US management team with the appointment of Chris Liddell as new board chairman, Bill Veghte as a director and Peter Karpas as CEO for North America.<br /><br />“As you would expect from a fast expanding software company, our strategy is to increase US representation on our Board,” says Rod Drury, Xero CEO and founder. These three high calibre appointments are all significant additions to our American-based leadership team and position us strongly in the US and globally. Adding their combined experience and capabilities will help us become the global leader in small business financial software.”<br /><br />Liddell replaces Sam Knowles who has resigned as director and Chairman of Xero.<br /><br />Liddell is a high-profile expat Kiwi, and most recently worked with General Motors as vice chairman and CFO. Prior to General Motors, Liddell was CFO at Microsoft and International Paper. He was also CFO, and eventually CEO at Carter Holt Harvey.<br /><br />Bill Veghte is appointed an independent non-executive director. Veghte, who is based in Sn Francisco, is executive vice president and general manager of HP’s Enterprise Group. He is responsible for the development and delivery of IT infrastructure solutions and the direction, management, and delivery of HP’s cloud programme.<br /><br />The new CEO for North America, Peter Karpas, joined from PayPal, where he was most recently vice president and general manager, North America, for small and medium business.<br /><br />Karpas also worked at Intuit, as chief marketing and product management officer and senior vice president.<br /><br />“His proven leadership, comprehensive familiarity with the B2B market in North America in both accounting and payments will help our drive for growth in the USA where there are over 29 million small businesses,” says Drury.