As part of your quarterly earnings reportHewlett Packard Enterprise declare On Tuesday, President Meg Whitman will step down as of March 1, 2018.
Antonio Neri, the company’s current CEO, will take over as CEO. One million dollars will be paid to him.
Whitman, who took over as CEO in 2011 after what could be called a significant management downsizing, oversees the company’s two divisions. Last year, HPE spun off its IT services division, while the original Hewlett-Packard split into HPE and HP Inc. back in 2015. Whitman will retain a board position at the company.
“I am incredibly proud of all that we have accomplished since I joined HP in 2011,” Whitman said in a statement. “Now is the right time for Antonio and a new generation of leaders to take control of HPE.”
Whitman cut his tech marketing teeth at eBay after a stint at FTD Florists and Hasbro. He arrived at HP after the dismissal of the current Oracle CEO Mark Hurd over sketchy financial reports (found in the investigation of sexual harassment charges) and the subsequent rapid dismissal of his replacement Leo Apotheker (who, arrived from SAP, came from change HP). into the software industry).
Whitman’s tenure at HP
It is fair to say that he inherited sadness when he arrived. HPE’s statement on Whitman’s departure focused on the brilliance of his comeback strategy. Central to his strategy was the bifurcation of the HP brand into separate consumer and commercial companies, “which is the largest corporate separation in history,” a company spokesman declined. “He also led the next round and mergers of HPE’s Enterprise Services and software businesses, as well as strategic acquisitions including Aruba, SGI, SimpliVity and Nimble Storage.”
As a result of all these transactions, HP’s subsidiaries have created “significant shareholder value, including nearly $18 billion in share repurchases and dividends.” HPE has been a good investment for investors since its birth two years ago, increasing its stock value by 89 percent since the split. Another HP has fared well in terms of market value as well—higher than its value at the time of Whitman’s discovery.
But stock prices don’t tell the full story of Whitman’s writing of the house built by David Packard and William Hewlett. Along the way, he (with a little help from his predecessor) purged at least 35,000 workers. The HPE software “spin-off” was actually the $8.8 billion combined sale to MicroFocus of three software businesses that HP acquired for $16 billion for maintenance and license harvesting. The HP Enterprise Services spin-off created DXC Technology, which is essentially another business card replacement for people who are already EDS and still have a set of product certificates in the portfolios of long-term HP customers. .
In fact, Whitman was not fully responsible for what happened to old HP. Most of those who have gone ahead – including the merger with Compaq on Carly Fiorina’s watch – created a chimera of a company that takes over (and often quickly dies) companies with products or ideas that catch their eye. The global decline in PC sales at the beginning of the decade also hastened Whitman’s hand in breaking up what had become a bloated industrial giant that fed heavily on printer ink sales.
The lower levels of HP are at least now more relevant (mostly) and focused. HP Inc is still the leader in the overall PC market, and of course thanks to Whitman’s skill to change the PC game and printer business rather than liquid consumer PCs as Apotheker planned. So estimating Whitman’s HP heritage is a bit complicated.
Whitman was also considered for the position of Uber CEO earlier this year. He ran unsuccessfully for governor of California as a Republican in 2010.