As expected, the embattled technology company Hewlett-Packard has named former eBay CEO and Republican candidate for California governor Meg Whitman as its CEO.
The news of her candidacy for the job was first reported Wednesday by Kara Swisher at the Wall Street Journal‘s blog AllThingsD.
The market’s reaction to the news has been mixed, with shares of the company plunging along with the rest of the stock market on Thursday, but it ticked back up one percent in after-hours trading to around $23.
As Swisher notes, Whitman’s experience is in the consumer space with her 10-year tenure at eBay rather than managing a complex technology company like HP, and her performance there had mixed reviews despite the company’s growth.
As Business Insider Publisher Henry Blodget summarized in a post last night, many Silicon Valley insiders “howled with laughter” at the idea of Whitman heading up HP.
Indeed with the vast array of problems that HP faces, and Whitman’s background in management consulting, it looks as if the board is looking to Whitman for a major reorganization of the company.
