HP today announced that its board of directors has appointed Meg Whitman as president and chief executive officer.
In addition, Ray Lane has moved from non-executive chairman to executive chairman of the board of directors, and the board intends to appoint a lead independent director promptly. These leadership appointments are effective immediately and follow the decision that Léo Apotheker step down as president and chief executive officer and resign as a director of the company.
“We are fortunate to have someone of Meg Whitman’s caliber and experience step up to lead HP,” said Lane in the press release. “We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead. Meg is a technology visionary with a proven track record of execution. She is a strong communicator who is customer focused with deep leadership capabilities. Furthermore, as a member of HP’s board of directors for the past eight months, Meg has a solid understanding of our products and markets.”
Whitman said in the press release, “I am honored and excited to lead HP. I believe HP matters – it matters to Silicon Valley, California, the country and the world.”
Speaking on behalf of the board, Lane said, “We very much appreciate Léo’s efforts and his service to HP since his appointment last year. The board believes that the job of the HP CEO now requires additional attributes to successfully execute on the company’s strategy. Meg Whitman has the right operational and communication skills and leadership abilities to deliver improved execution and financial performance.”
Source: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
MacDailyNews Take: Good luck turning around that mess, Meg.
Parachuting into the train’s racing cab as it plummets forward, the bridge ahead gone.
Unbelievable. HP is like a car spinning donuts – going nowhere real fast.
Actually, Apotheker just recently saved HP from billions of dollars of losses that were inflicted by the delusional former CEO Mark Hurd, which bought Palm and appointed Rubinstein to head the double failure OS/hardware project.
So I would say that HP might turned to worse with this change, not even staying in the same place.
whoopie doo!
like S Ballmer ruining Microsoft…have you ever met her @ one of the annual eBay expos?
she’s robotic. not visionary & street smart as S Jobs.
eBay is cheap like Dull Dell. she did not invent eBay, she just diluted/bastardized it like Michael D cheapened PCs for all.
doing stuff for the masses vs elite, is benevolent, yet only if they don’t get crap to use.
meg will not save HP if HP screwed up so much already. there’s no 2nd phoenix. steve jobs returned to apple 1997 and never in human history has a co. resurrected like this. it won’t be repeated. why not? simply because it requires natural talent, iQ, vision, practicality, honesty, & 100% respect for materials & people who pay for you to exist as mfr or service provider, plus it takes zero b.s. Meggie dear.
May she be in place for as long as it takes (though I say that with a touch of sadness, as HP is/was a proud and innovative company and deserved better).
HP is not in that bad of shape. Whitman will simply have to decide where to focus HP, or whether to break the company into two: Corporate services (a la IBM) and Consumer products (webOS, PCs and printers).
I would expect her to come in and re-instate webOS products, especially the TouchPad, but with a renewed focus on hardware quality. A strong commitment very publicly stated would go a long ways toward righting HP’s consumer division, then HP could get to work improving its webOS devices without too much pressure.
This should be a very quick turnaround.
Too bad, I was hoping they were saving her as a replacement for Ballmer in case, God forbid, he should ever leave Microsoft.
I’d rather see Carly Fiorina replace Ballmer if, perish forbid, he should ever leave Microsoft.
They all deserve each other.
This shows what the board thought of jettisoning the expensive purchase of webos and their tablet strategy.
There is still money to be made as the number 2 tablet maker. The writing is on the wall with samsung sinking fast and windows 8 flailing.
Look at the recent announcements about nokia, htc looking to vertically integrate and dump android. HP is really in a decent position if they can ship some decent hardware and bring some developers on board. They still have a more respected brand name than the other wannabe players.
I’ve always felt HP was Apple’s biggest threat. webOS has tremendous potential. It is the ONLY vertically integrated mobile OS ready to challenge iOS at this time. Renewed focus could put HP in a solid #2 position. Fifteen percent of a 300,000,000 unit market would be very tasty, and is about what HP does in PCs. Add handsets and buying Palm becomes a very smart transaction.
Agreed, being number 2 in an emerging product category is not a bad place to be, especially when that product is cannibalizing another of your product categories.
I too think webOS shows potential, short of iOS, I’d much rather use it than android. I’ve tried them all, and the Android experience is god awful. WebOS was just rough around the edges and hindered by slow hardware.
Furthermore if she has any brains at all she will streamline the Pc side at HP. Too many lines, a big waste of time, money and resources given their low margins.
They’ve been making crap for years. But apparently those who like Whitman forget that and how HP is an “over-ambitious printer company.”
Man, if they named Limbaugh CEO, this site would be called “HP Daily News.”
HP is playing musical chairs with it’s Board members!
Its.
…a flying circus fer shure!
(p.s. – all on netflix now)
Color me unimpressed. Meg needs to replenish her stack after that failed bid for governor, period.
What IS it with HP at the top, anyway?
Peace.
Trainwreck in slow motion.
Don’t want HP to fail Guys!
They happen to develop the leading hardware and software platforms for the backend of cell networks!
So you can wish failure for product lines, but we all want their LTE, GSM, etc. Tech to succeed!
Fire Hurd.
Hire this dude.
Let him take apart the company with no buyers for the parts.
Did the board short HP last year or something?
MDN’s take is way too supportive of a real piece of work….
So Meg believes that HP matters to the country and the world. Maybe it used to a long time ago, Meg. Unfortunately, it was turned into an overgrown screwdriver shop years ago, so it hasn’t mattered much for a long time…
wow:
they hired Apo a software guy with no hardware experience and fired him because the software guy wanted to dismantle the hardware business and sell software (Apo: “why did they hire me in the first place???”)
now they hired Meggy whose claim to work success is running a shopping channel (Ebay) and marketing Mr. Potato Head for Hasbro.
She’s a economics grad the only thing she’s related to tech is that Ebay uses the internet.
Meg, remember this? “You never met me and I never met you?” Cost you the governorship perhaps so you should remember, you and your lying husband.