Hewlett-Packard’s new CEO, Leo Apotheker, is a 57-year-old German who speaks five languages, has plenty of international experience and currently resides in Paris.
His multilingual background could come in handy as HP not only expands overseas but attempts to stitch together a vast array of products and services across different technologies.
“No other company can match what HP does in the marketplace,” Apotheker said in a conference call Friday. Given HP’s diversified product lineup, he said, it is uniquely positioned to thrive over the next few years.
“I believe HP is an undervalued company,” said Apotheker, who was the only person offered the job.
The appointments Thursday of Apotheker and Ray Lane, who was named HP’s non-executive chairman, ended a nearly two-month search to fill the company’s top post. The position had been open since HP’s board pushed out Mark Hurd as CEO amid allegations of sexual harassment and deceptive expense reports.
Apotheker, who left business-software behemoth SAP after a short stint as CEO, is expected to carry out a strategy crafted by Hurd, in which HP built upon its leadership in PCs and printers to expand into technology services, computer networking, data storage and security.
Peter Falvey, co-head of technology investment banking for Morgan Keegan, expects Apotheker to “step up its acquisition pace.” The company recently picked up data-storage firm 3Par and security vendor ArcSight.
Trip Chowdhry, a tech analyst at Global Equities Research, anticipates Apotheker will also lead a more aggressive software push, pitting it against longtime partner Oracle.
“HP should be more valuable than the sum of its parts,” said Apotheker, who takes over HP on Nov. 1. “Software (which accounts for just 3% of the company’s annual revenue of about $118 billion) is sort of the glue to make that happen.”
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