Meg Whitman has announced she's stepping down as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise early next year, which would mark an end to her six-year stint at the tech firm.
HPE's Meg Whitman Plans Exit
In a call with analysts, Whitman said HPE is in better shape now than it was when she first joined in 2011, before the company's split from PC and printer company HP Inc.
Whitman said that at the time, HP was an "enormous conglomerate" that confused customers because it was selling too many disparate products: servers, printers, computers, software, and others.
"This company was a slower company than I would have liked to seen six years ago," she said.
Whitman As HPE CEO
Whitman will leave a much different company than the one she joined in, that much is certain. She was responsible for restructuring HP into two brands, collating products and other businesses then putting them into one, and then streamlining other units into HPE as a way to compete with cloud-based rivals.
HPE was the result of that split, with Whitman taking the CEO role and Dion Weisler, then executive VP of HP's old printing and PC business, taking the CEO role of HP Inc.
As previous CEO of eBay, Whitman made it a huge ecommerce avenue, to the point where it now rivals Amazon. She is also an investor for Uber, and helped it amid its shaky search for a new CEO earlier this year when Travis Kalanick was sacked. At one point, she was even reported to be taking Uber's CEO role but later confirmed she had no interest.
If she was offered the job, Whitman said she's still not sure if she would have taken it. Whitman argued that she prefers running smaller businesses because it gives her a chance to be in-depth with the customers.
"I like a more nimble, agile company and I have no plans to leave HPE," Whitman said at the time when pertinent rumors surfaced.
Whitman said she has no intentions of joining politics. She is simply going to take a little down time. Also, there's "no chance" she'd join an HPE competitor or HP.
President Antonio Neri To Take The Lead
Antonio Neri, current president of HPE, is set to replace Whitman. He has been with the company since 1995. He thinks the company is currently in a "tremendous position to win." He hasn't disclosed any plans he might have as would-be CEO, but that should come shortly.
HPE announced in September it was going to cut 5,000 jobs worldwide, representing 10 percent of its total global workforce.
