(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)