Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) on Thursday named former eBay Inc chief executive Meg Whitman its president and CEO, replacing the harshly criticized Leo Apotheker in a bid to restore investor confidence in the iconic Silicon Valley company.
The decision was made without a formal CEO search and piled renewed criticism on the board, which investors have blamed — at least in part — for the storied company’s recent missteps.
Chairman Ray Lane, who becomes executive chairman with a mandate to help Whitman run a sprawling US$120 billion empire with more than 300,000 employees, tried to assure disillusioned investors by saying HP is making a fresh start with a new CEO and — crucially — a virtually revamped board of directors.
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Lane vowed that the days of board dysfunction — the wire-tapping scandal, the firing of Mark Hurd after a sexual harassment probe and the hiring of Apotheker — were over.
The board works well together, he said.
“It’s amazing how they challenge the management team, challenge each other,” Lane said in an interview. “They are smart, they bring great insight to the table and I think we make good decisions.”
Whitman, an Internet retail expert with a mixed track record, is not an obvious choice to revive HP, analysts said. The failed California gubernatorial candidate transformed eBay from a few dozen employees in 1998 into a global Internet retail powerhouse, but the final years of her reign were marked by sputtering growth, intensifying Wall Street criticism and a string of unwise acquisitions, including of Skype.
She has been an HP director about eight months. While her elevation surprised many with its seeming hastiness — for the second time, internal candidates such as enterprise chief David Donatelli were passed over — Apotheker’s ejection had been a matter of time.
He became the third straight HP CEO shown the door.
“Some might be saying maybe Meg Whitman isn’t the right person, either. She’s not a hardware person,” Auriga analyst Kevin Hunt said. But HP “just needs someone to set the direction.”
Defending her track record, Whitman said as head of eBay she had been a major purchaser of HP enterprise products.
“So I actually understand this space relatively well,” she said in an interview. “What I bring to this table is leadership, management skills, strategic vision, communications and an execution orientation to deliver the result.”
Whitman said HP remained committed to completing a review of its PC division before the year ends and is expected to close the pricey US$12 billion acquisition of British software maker Autonomy Corp PLC as planned.
HP’s shares closed down 4.8 percent at US$22.80, wiping out much of Wednesday’s 6.6 percent gain.
“We would view any decision not to conduct a comprehensive search of internal and external candidates for a permanent CEO role as unsatisfactory and unnecessarily hasty,” Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi, who has been openly critical of HP’s board, wrote in a note earlier on Thursday.
Lane, however, fired back by saying Whitman was handpicked for her communication, people and execution skills, while Apotheker fell short on several fronts.
Lane himself will also be taking on a bigger role in the company as executive chairman.
“I am here to help Meg execute on the business,” Lane said. “I will be standing behind her and I will be working in areas that maybe I can help with a little more than she can do herself.”
In less than a year on the job, Apotheker, formerly SAP AG chief executive, slashed HP’s forecasts for three straight quarters and struggled to reverse a 50 percent plunge in the share price.
The computer maker is fighting to restore its crumbling credibility. Whitman has to galvanize growth at a company that gets more than a third of its revenue from a slowing European economy and is struggling to offset sliding PC revenue with services and software.
“We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead,” Lane said.
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