Whitman will leave as CEO in February
HP Enterprise taps president to take over
Meg Whitman, who oversaw the breakup of one of Silicon Valley’s pioneering companies, is stepping down as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise said Tuesday that Whitman will hand over the reins of the company to its president, Antonio Neri, on Feb. 1.
Whitman, 61, took over Hewlett-Packard Co. in 2011 after it suffered a series of losses amid rising competition under her predecessor, Léo Apotheker. She slashed jobs and reset expectations for how well the company, once known for its innovation,
could perform at a time when customers were adopting cloud computing services that HP was ill-equipped to provide.
After initially opposing efforts to break up the company, a tech industry institution founded in 1939, she eventually agreed to split Hewlett Packard’s PC and printing units from businesses that aided corporate computing. In 2015, Hewlett Packard was split in two: HP Inc. sells PCs and printers. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, led by Whitman, is focused on selling data-center hardware and other commercial tech gear to big organizations.
The company spun off a big chunk of its business software lineup last year in an $8.8 billion deal with Micro Focus International.
Both Whitman and Neri, 50, will serve on the Hewlett Packard Enterprise board.
Whitman said Tuesday that she plans on taking “a little bit of downtime” after a 35-year career. And she ruled out working for a competitor.
“I’ve become quite loyal to Hewlett-Packard and Hewlett Packard Enterprise,” she said. “I love this company and I wouldn’t ever go to a competitor.” She was in the running to replace Travis Kalanick as the CEO of San Francisco ride-hailing company Uber but that job went to Dara Khosrowshahi in August.
Before HP, Whitman served as CEO of eBay, a company she steered from a fledgling startup with just 30 employees into a household name. She was with the San Jose company from 1998 until 2008. She also ran an unsuccessful California gubernatorial campaign, which cost her $144 million.