Sept 12 (Reuters) - Microsoft ( MSFT ) on Thursday named

former GE finance chief Carolina Dybeck Happe as its

chief operations officer.

The appointment comes at a time when Microsoft ( MSFT ) is

aggressively pursuing the lead in the cloud services market,

doubling down on AI investments to bolster its cloud business

and close the gap with Amazon's Amazon Web Services.

Dybeck Happe, GE's finance chief since March 2020, was

instrumental in leading the company's turnaround. She stepped

down from the role in September 2023, but continued as senior

vice president, completing the spin-off of energy infrastructure

unit GE Vernova in April 2024.

She has held finance head roles at multiple companies,

including at A.P. Moeller - Maersk and Swedish access control

and security firm Assa Abloy, among others.

"In this newly created role, she will join the senior

leadership team (SLT), reporting to me," Microsoft ( MSFT ) CEO Satya

Nadella said in a statement.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi

Majumdar, Anil D'Silva and Shinjini Ganguli)