Thursday, March 31, 2005

HP's new CEO: the un-Carly

Hewlett Packard has a new CEO, Mark Hurd, and according to the San Jose Mercury News he's making a positive first impression with employees:
The HP employees started out with polite applause Wednesday, as they met their new boss for the first time.

But they erupted in spontaneous claps of delight when Mark Hurd told them he won't chase the limelight -- setting clear distance between himself and his predecessor, Carly Fiorina.
Fiorina, who was forced out by HP's board in February, spent more time building her CEO-celebrity image than bolstering HP's financial performance.

To get a read on how Hurd might change things at HP, analysts are studying Hurd's 25 year career at NCR, where he was CEO until this week. I checked with my own source within NCR about how NCR folks feel about losing Hurd. He wrote,
No doubt it is a big deal. For NCR it is bad news, as evidenced by our $600M loss in market cap over the past two days. It is very painful, but financially rewarding, to "right the ship", which is what he did here. It will be interesting to see if he can do it in a different and much larger context at HP. [The press is] portraying him as low key. While he is not very well known, he is very high energy. Let's see how much he avoids the spotlight. Personally, I think he will welcome it!
The San Jose Mercury News has more on Hurd's reception at HP.

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