Jeffrey Clarke, a leader of the management team that put the operations of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer together in the wake of their contentious merger, resigned unexpectedly Tuesday.
Clarke, the former chief financial officer of Compaq, is the latest in a series of executive departures from Hewlett-Packard announced recently.
Webb McKinney, who led the merger integration team with Clarke, said earlier this month that he planned to retire at the end of this year. Susan Bowick, executive vice president for human resources, announced last week that she planned to leave.
McKinney and Bowick, were genuine retirements, if a little early, analysts said. McKinney is 58, and Bowick is 55.
But the departure of Clarke, 42, and a few other former Compaq executives, analysts say, are of greater significance to Hewlett-Packard in terms of a thinning of the management ranks below Carly Fiorina, the company's chief executive, who overcame a fierce proxy challenge to complete the Compaq merger in May last year.
Mary McDowell, senior vice president for strategy and corporate development at Hewlett-Packard, resigned last month. Nokia, the big cell-phone maker, announced on Monday that it had hired McDowell as a senior vice president. Howard Elias, another senior vice president at Hewlett, left last month to become an executive vice president of EMC, the maker of computer storage systems.
These younger, ambitious executives, analysts say, seem to have sought larger responsibilities elsewhere once it became apparent they may have to wait longer than they had anticipated to run entire business groups on their own.
"Some departures are absolutely inevitable, but this is definitely something to watch," said Laura Conigliaro, an analyst at Goldman Sachs & Co. "Hewlett-Packard has lost some good management people."
The unanticipated resignation of Clarke and the phrasing of the brief announcement raise questions about the circumstances of his departure. The company statement said Clarke had "elected to resign immediately." The two-sentence statement added that his resignation "was mutually agreed to and was appropriate."
The language of the exit statement is different from the usual terminology in such statements, which tend to be complimentary in a general way, often wishing the departing executive well in future endeavors. Institutional investors and analysts who spoke privately with Hewlett-Packard officials on Tuesday were assured that Clarke's departure did not hinge on a fundamental strategic disagreement with Fiorina.
Clarke, who was executive vice president for operations, was considered a strong manager with expertise in finance, operations and strategy.
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