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Five outsiders who could lead Hewlett-Packard

23.09.2011
Having gone through a in the past 10 to 15 years, Hewlett-Packard may soon find itself looking for yet another new chief, despite just tapping Meg Whitman for that job this week.HP's Thursday of board member Whitman as its insider choice to replace Leo Apotheker after less than a year came under fire from some who believe that the company should have named an interim leader and conducted an executive search. "We would view any decision not to conduct a comprehensive search of internal and external candidates for a permanent CEO role as unsatisfactory and unnecessarily hasty," analyst firm Sanford Bernstein wrote in a research note this week before Whitman was named. "We also believe that shareholder reaction to Whitman as a permanent CEO would be mixed."

HP decided against conducting an outside search because it wasn't necessary, board Executive Chairman Ray Lane said . But having just conducted the search for Apotheker, HP still had a good idea of who was available and "if we thought there was a better choice on the outside, we would have conducted [a new] search," Lane said.

But if Whitman doesn't last, here's a look at some potential outside CEO candidates HP could pursue down the road:

Mills' name came up regularly as a potential HP CEO after Hurd left the company. In addition, he would bring broad-based experience to HP thanks to his current role, where he oversees IBM's software and hardware strategy and manages more than 100,000 employees.

Mills was also at IBM in the 1990s, when the company went through a similar transition as HP is going through now, said Frank Scavo, managing partner of IT strategy consulting firm Strativa.