Dell Bidders Looking at Possible Replacements for Michael Dell

by Jeffrey Burt

In February, CEO Michael Dell announced a plan to buy his company in conjunction with Silver Lake Partners for $24.4 billion and take it private. He has argued that the plan gives the company the best chance to continue its transformation from a PC maker to an enterprise IT solutions provider, and to do so away from Wall Street scrutiny. Some larger investors soon began criticizing the deal, saying the deal greatly undervalued the company. Under the deal, Michael Dell would retain control of the company.

Investors Southeastern and T. Rowe Price quickly said they would both vote against Michael Dell’s plan, and were soon joined by Carl Icahn, well known for aggressively pursuing his own agenda with various companies such as Blockbuster and Imclone. Icahn is partnering with Southeastern, and has said if they are successful in thwarting Michael Dell’s plans and gaining control of the company, someone other than Michael Dell will be CEO.

Mark Hurd was Hewlett-Packard’s CEO from 2005 until 2010, when he was forced to resign after the board of directors found he used false information in some expense forms. Hurd soon was hired as a president of software giant Oracle by CEO Larry Ellison, who had blasted the HP board’s decision to push Hurd out. His name was initially bandied about as a Michael Dell replacement when Blackstone Group was considering a bid for Dell.

Michael Capellas was the CEO of Compaq when it was bought by HP for more than $20 billion. Capellas stayed with HP for about six months after the controversial acquisition, and eventually became CEO of MCI and, later, of VCE, a partnership of Cisco Systems, EMC and VMware that makes converged data center solutions. He also is on Cisco’s board of directors.

Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP’s Printing and Personal Systems organization, has been mentioned in the past as a possible candidate for HP’s top position, though both times the job went to someone else. He has more than 30 years of management experience, including a stint as CEO of Palm.

Michael Daniels was a longtime IBM employee, retiring in March after overseeing the company’s massive IT services business. (Daniels, right, is pictured here with former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano.)

Kevin Rollins is the only other person to serve as CEO at Dell, a tenure that lasted from 2004 to 2007. He became president of the company in 2001, working closely with Michael Dell. Rollins was fired from Dell in 2007 after his three years as CEO, during which time the company made some significant moves—such as adopting chips from Advanced Micro Devices—but also laid off about 8,000 workers and saw its stock decline almost 9 percent. Michael Dell returned to the top job and began the company’s transformation.