HPE CEO Meg Whitman to step down in 2018 [Updated]

Whitman: “I’m incredibly proud of all we’ve accomplished since I joined HP in 2011.”

As part of its quarterly earnings report, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced Tuesday that CEO Meg Whitman would be stepping down from her position as of February 1, 2018.
Antonio Neri, the company’s current president, will be taking over as CEO. He will be paid $1 million.

Whitman, who took over the position as CEO in 2011 after what might be called a major management meltdown, oversaw the company’s two splits. 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'm incredibly proud of all we've 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 the reins of HPE."

Whitman cut her tech market teeth at eBay after a leadership at FTD Florists and Hasbro. She arrived at HP after the ouster of now-Oracle CEO Mark Hurd over sketchy expense reports (found in an investigation of sexual harassment charges) and the subsequent rapid purge of his replacement Leo Apotheker (who, having arrived from SAP, sought to turn HP into a software company).

Whitman’s tenure at HP

It's safe to say that she inherited a mess when she arrived. HPE's statement on Whitman's departure focused on the brilliance of her turnaround strategy. The centerpiece of her strategy was the bifurcation of the HP brand into separate consumer and enterprise companies, "which was the largest corporate separation in history," a company spokesperson wrote. "She also led the subsequent spin off 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 deals, the various HPs created "significant shareholder value, including nearly $18 billion in share repurchases and dividends." HPE has been a good investment for stockholders since its birth two years ago, having increased its stock value by 89 percent since the split. The other HP has faired well in terms of stock price as well—surging well above its price at the time of Whitman's arrival.

But the stock prices don't tell the full story of Whitman's carving up of the house that David Packard and William Hewlett built. Along the way, she (with a little help from her predecessor) purged at least 35,000 employees. The HPE Software "spin-off" really amounted to an elaborate $8.8 billion reverse-merger sale to MicroFocus of three software businesses HP acquired for $16 billion for maintenance and license harvesting. The HP Enterprise Services spin-off created DXC Technology, which amounts to yet another business card change for the people who used to be EDS and yet another set of stock certificates in long-time HP stockholders' portfolios.

Admittedly, Whitman doesn't hold full responsibility for what happened to the old HP. Multiple predecessors' excesses—including the merger with Compaq on Carly Fiorina's watch—created a chimera of a company that acquired (and often quickly shut down) companies with products or concepts that caught their eyes. The worldwide slump in PC sales at the beginning of the decade also hastened Whitman's hand in dismembering what had become a bloated corporate giant that fed largely on printer ink sales.

The smaller bits of HP are at least now more coherent (mostly) and focused. HP Inc. still holds the lead in overall PC market share, and that's certainly thanks to Whitman's maneuvering to spin off the PC and printer business rather than liquidate consumer PCs as Apotheker planned. So calculating Whitman's HP legacy is somewhat complicated.

Whitman was also considered for the position of Uber CEO earlier this year. She unsuccessfully ran for governor of California as a Republican in 2010.