Hewlett-Packard is beginning to fill out the lineup of executives who will take over the two new companies when the tech giant breaks apart later this year.
It already had been announced that current CEO Meg Whitman will retain that role with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which will house such businesses as servers, networking, storage, software and cloud services. Dion Weisler, currently executive vice president of HP’s printers and PC unit, will be CEO of HP Inc., which will include printers and PCs.
The company this week continued filling out the executive teams that will take over the two new companies. Cathie Lesjak, currently HP’s CFO, will stay with Whitman at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, as will Martin Fink, CTO and head of Hewlett-Packard Labs. Other well-known executives staying with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise include Henry Gomez, who will be chief marketing and communications officer; Mike Nefkens, who will lead the Enterprise Services Group; Bill Veghte, who is heading the separation efforts and will be general manager of the Enterprise Group; and Antonio Neri, who HP said will be the “day-to-day leader” of the Enterprise Group.
Those moving with Weisler to HP Inc. include Jon Flaxman as COO; Shane Wall as CTO; Ron Coughlin, who will run the Personal Systems Group; and Stephen Nigro, who will lead the Printing Group.
There are still executive positions that need to be filled, such as the HR lead for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and CFO, general counsel and chief marketing officer at HP Inc.
After several years of resisting calls from some analysts to break out the company’s PC business, Whitman in October 2014 said the vendor would break in half later this year, creating two independent companies that will stand on their own, though work closely with each other. The announcement came several years into the CEO’s five-year turnaround plan for the company, which included eliminating 50,000 jobs as part of an expense-cutting effort.
The decision to split the company in two raised questions about the effectiveness of the turnaround effort, but Whitman said in interviews that it was the success of the plan that convinced executives that the two new companies would be strong enough to succeed on their own.
“It is the right time now, and it wasn’t when I first got here,” Whitman said during an interview on CNBC last year. “I don’t even think it was a couple of years ago.”
