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Meg Whitman may have lost the governor's race to Jerry Brown, but now she has a new tech company to run.
Taking the wraps off one of the worst-kept secrets in Silicon Valley, Hewlett-Packard Thursday said Meg Whitman has been appointed chief executive officer, replacing Leo Apotheker after less than a year.
The company also said Ray Lane, a former president of Oracle Corp., would become executive chairman of the board of directors rather than non-executive chair.
“We are fortunate to have someone of Meg Whitman’s caliber and experience step up to lead HP,” Lane said in a statement. “We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead."
HP said Apotheker, a former SAP executive whose hiring was announced by HP in September 2010, is stepping down as president, CEO and will leave the company's board of directors, HP said.
"I am honored and excited to lead HP," Whitman said in a statement. I believe HP matters – it matters to Silicon Valley, California, the country and the world.”
HP, considered the original Silicon Valley tech company, has been engulfed in turmoil for years, especially since the ouster of former CEO Mark Hurd last year in a scandal over his relationship with a female contractor.
More recently, the company has confused investors and consumers with a new strategy, jettisoning a TouchPad computing device after only a few weeks on the market and announcing plans to consider spinning off its personal computer division.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale University management expert, said the board had been wrestling with the CEO issue for three months, and he applauded the decision that came down Thursday.
"Meg is very good as a communicator," he told CNBC. "She's gotten better since her political campaign.... What she doesn't know about enterprise systems she is certainly going to learn."
He said the company made a smart move in giving increased executive responsibility to Lane, given his strong technical background and a history with Whitman that dates to her eBay days.
Rumors that Apotheker would be ousted in favor of Whitman, a billionaire former eBay chief executive who ran for California governor last year, began circulating Wednesday. It led to widespread hand-wringing in Silicon valley as well as questions of whether HP's board of directors is the "worst ever."
James Stewart of the New York Times reported that most of the 12 members of the board had not even met with Apotheker when he was hired.
But Sonnenfeld said the board has been "completely reconstructed" since then, including the addition of Lane. "They actually are doing the right thing now at long last," he said.
You can see the interview with Sonnenfeld here:
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of Yale and Ashok Kumar of Rodman & Renshaw comment on the management shakeup at the tech giant.
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Watch "Blue", HP's digital printing initiative. If Meg closes that or offshores the development, then HP literally has no assets. That will be the last leg in HP's stool.
Let's watch Meg's plan for "creating jobs" in action.
Any bets there'll soon be more unemployed American's and more jobs shipped overseas?
Another Wall Street Re-tread, cut and slash pay, outsource and reap the Profits..
Wall Street BLUE CHIPS need some fresh blood... Enough of the Cronyism..
Well, this should finish off HP. A tragic end to the vision of Bill Hewlett and David Packard, started in a garage no less.
This is the classic case of great company ruined by MBA's and "business types" that have absolutely no idea what the company's "core business" is.
The "real" HP is actually Agilent that was "spun off", the remainder made its bones weth LaserJet printers and has been downhill ever since.
It was either her or Delores Umbridge. I swear, HP is a goner.
Maybe she can now afford the Liposuction and Face Lift ,
That's it for me, not buying HP anymore. Meg is all about shipping American jobs overseas. This GOP T-Nut loser is a tax dodger that hides her assets in overseas accounts.
Patriotic, So that's where all my Ebay and Paypal fees went?
Of course she wants to ship all jobs out of our country. After this stint, will she run for president. She couldn't buy her last political post. Maybe she should go to SuperCuts and get that mess of hair of her done. Not tearing her down but she lost all credibility. Do you think she cares about HP employees or customers. Hell no she is only thinking about herself.
LIVE TO RIDE, Do you know "Harley guy" ?
Meg, got her hand in HP cookie jar,( HP new "Coffin" ) Their goes more American jobs to China.
Patriotic, Nope!
THis is the final straw, I a dumping HP stock
Why do they want to hire right wing politico losers
they need vision, Meg Whitman and Cary Fiorina both failed at that
RIP Hewlett Packard.
LOL and cry.
Good riddance. I wouldn't buy another HP product, ever............
It's going to take more than a woman's touch to get them anywhere.
How does someone who ran an online auction house get such a plum job? Probably the only one that would take it. Sadly this once great company within two to three years will no longer exist except as a part of Oracle.
Source: http://www.tmz.com/person/meg-whitman/
Seems she is qualified to be a CEO both by experience and education.
Qualified to do what? Send ALL the jobs over seas? Ms.Whitman is no more than the usual CEO hack... making millions while the rest of us lose jobs, retirements and a quality of life ONLY the SUPER RI$H seem to be entitled to in the US these days. So very sad. Soon... they will not be able to sell their "made in China" crap in our country... no one will be able to afford it! But we ALL know the RI$H do not give a crap about our country or us! Greed pure.. and simple greed!!!
For someone who has a tag that is GO USA you sure are giving the queen of outsourcing a pass.
I love how you guys rip the President at every opportunity but you give business leaders a pass for doing just as much if not more damage to our economy.. Pathetic..
Meg Whitman is living proof that all horse's a$$es are not attached to horses.
HP deserves all they get. They actually paid Carly to leave a decimated Lucent to come decimate them. Now they want Meg Whitman? Will they ever learn?
OMG! Another hardcore capitalist communist sympathizer! HP can rot! From now on Dell products exclusively, hire American IT companies (who import labor btw). BOHICA.
Talk about shooting yourself in whatever body part left... Who's the heck going to buy anything from HP anymore?
Waiting for another screw-up!!
New run of TouchPads coming soon
Didn't her run for political office show everyone how nutty she is???
The board should have gone on their knees and prayed for someone from IBM to show up!!
Big Mistake... is this the end of HP?
We are offically screwed now.
Thank God I only buy Epson.
Carly, where are you when we need you!?
She's on her knees begging for something else . . .
The first thing she should do is to take the moratorium off of re-hiring HP folks "retired" by Mark Turd....she would then at least have some folks over there that might be able to remember the "HP Way"
Meg is a brilliant capable woman, but she's not the right person for HP.....not even close. HP is going to be taken over.... that is the only reason I can see for hiring her in that position. Like it was said once: Just because your daddy ran a drug store does not mean he can run WalMart. Ebay is not HP.
And the current "HP" is not the real HP either, kind like Abercrombie & Fitch...
California got Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown and HP got Meg Whitman. Let's start a pool to see which one tanks first.
Time for HP too send more jobs overseas..Nothing like slave labor to offset the exce$$ she will be paid as CFU...Besides Whitlessman needs to replenish her fortune to cover what she blew on her well deserved failed attempt to be Gov.....
With Ray Lane and Meg Whitman calling the shots Larry Ellison will have HP within two years.
I see more complaints on their computers kept me from buying one. Let them go offshore goodbye. Cut corners and cut your own throat. Pay your CEO well forget quality control.
You work at HP, start thinking about clearing out the cube, cause she has a well documented history of downsizing/ shipping jobs out and giving herself multi-million dollar bonuses in the same breath (you could have a chimp figure out that blueprint of a plan). We got a first hand look at her in CA., a certified loon, what did she spend,.... $50+ million to try an buy the governor's office and still was a loser. One more large dump load of dirt to bury another large corporation that employed alot of people in this country.
Meg will destroy HP in a brink.
Sometimes people need to look at a person's history and how they've handled situations in the past. Meg was well-known for minimizing account takeovers on eBay, while so many members lost monies. She was so excited to open up eBay to China ..... once again not doing her homework and what was to become a nightmare.
Good luck HP .. you will need it!
Whitman will destroy what is left of HP. She drove Ebay into the ground and was ousted from IBM.
So I should lie on my resume, say I SUCKED at my last jobs and I will get hired? Darn it! I dd not think of that! How clever.
As someone who knows HP very well and it's past (Cluster F|_|cks) of CEO's I am wondering if she has ever had any experience dealing with HP or just another BIMBO with a MBA that will kill the company. Only the future will tell as well as customers and employees.
She knows nothing about running a tech company. I fear the worst is yet to come. I am a fan of HP servers and printers, and I know they are getting deep into the storage space. I hope those areas are not effected by any more bad business decisions. If those survive the company will be ok for now. But for home use or general public customer area, they are done.
Oh my Goodness! What an utter mistake HP's BoD is making! Meg's eBay legacy, claims tremeondous growth which came only from continously increasing seller fees. I was one of those sellers.
She is going to get there and start building HP's coffin! She will find ways to alientate existing HP customers (like the eBay sellers). She's going be the ultimate wrecking ball to break up and stuff HP into that coffin!
Sold all of my HP stock today!
We all know it. Whitman was hired to auction off the remaining assets of HP after six months under her non-leadership. SELL! SELL! SELL! She'll be hiring illegal aliens, like she did at her home, so she won't have to pay benefits, taxes, etc and add to the unemployment rate of legal citizens. The unemployment that should come out of HP right now is the ENTIRE BOARD OF INCOMPETENT DIRECTORS. One year from now, a new CEO for HP, if there is a company left at all.