NCR Corp. has named Bill Nuti as its new president and CEO, effective Aug. 8.

Nuti succeeds Mark Hurd, who became the CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co. in March (see Update: HP taps NCR"s Mark Hurd as new CEO).

NCR"s chairman, James Ringler, has been acting CEO since Hurd left. Ringler will continue as chairman, NCR said in the statement.

Since December 2003, Nuti had served as president and CEO of Symbol Technologies Inc., where he strengthened the company"s product portfolio and positioned the company as a leading supplier in the radio frequency identification market, according to NCR.

After a 10-year stint at Cisco Systems Inc., Nuti joined Symbol in August 2002 as president and chief operating officer, where he led a challenging turnaround, NCR said. Under his leadership, Symbol in 2003 returned to profitability for the first time in five years. From 2002 to 2004, the company increased its revenue by 24 percent, NCR said.

Although NCR played up Nuti"s successful tenure at Symbol in its announcement, the company neglected to mention that Symbol on Monday reported a US$30.5 million net loss, or $0.12 per share, in the second quarter of this year.

NCR spokesman John Hourigan did not lay the blame for Symbol"s financial loss at Nuti"s feet. Hourigan said Symbol has had problems accurately forecasting its financial results.

"They"re operating under different constraints in terms of being able to forecast company performance and that directly related to issues that preceded Bill," Hourigan said. "But it hasn"t changed anything in terms of NCR, whatsoever. We"re very excited to have him and he stood out as the top choice for the CEO and [our] chairman made that known even earlier that he was the top choice."