Jon Huntsman Drops Off Chevron's Board After Winning Moscow Post

(Bloomberg) -- Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor who famously broke out into Chinese during a U.S. presidential debate, quit Chevron Corp.’s board after he was confirmed as U.S. ambassador to Russia.

Huntsman, 57, who was the ambassador to China for the Democratic administration of Barack Obama before taking a 2012 stab at becoming the Republican presidential nominee, formally severed his ties to the world’s third-largest publicly traded oil explorer on Sept. 28, Chevron said in a public filing Tuesday.

The Mandarin-speaking millionaire son of a Salt Lake City chemical magnate raised eyebrows during a 2012 GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire when he responded to a dig by rival Mitt Romney with a Chinese adage meaning, “He doesn’t quite understand the situation.” Huntsman, who also served an ambassadorship under President George H.W. Bush, arrives in Moscow as a special counsel back home probes allegations of Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Carroll in Houston at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net, Stephen Cunningham