Motorola Nears Choice for Head of Unit
By SARA SILVER, JOANN S. LUBLIN and JUSTIN SCHECK
June 4, 2008; Page B6
Motorola Inc. is nearing a choice for a head of its soon-to-be independent cellphone unit, with Hewlett-Packard Co. executive Todd Bradley emerging as Motorola's favorite, according to people familiar with the matter.
The negotiations with Mr. Bradley, one of two candidates still under consideration, are at a sensitive stage, and the people familiar with the matter cautioned that they could fall apart. Contract talks with a high-level external recruit sometimes collapse over compensation to cover restricted shares and stock options left behind.
When reached by phone on Tuesday night, Mr. Bradley said he wasn't planning to leave H-P. "I'm happy where I am, and I'm not planning to make any changes," he said.
Another person on the short list is a telecom executive, the people say. The identity of that person couldn't be learned. Motorola declined to comment.
Mr. Bradley, 49 years old, has a 25-year management career that includes senior roles at GE Capital Corp., the Dun & Bradstreet Corp., Gateway Corp., FedEx Corp. and palmOne Inc. He joined H-P in 2005, when the company's personal-computer division was losing money and some large investors were trying to get the company to drop the business altogether. Since then, he has remade the $28 billion division by focusing on retail sales and designing new, consumer-friendly notebooks.
He became chief executive of palmOne, when Palm Inc., best known for its Palm Pilot, split itself into two, separating its hardware unit from its software unit. He is credited with reviving the company through a series of cost cuts and a decision to move from personal organizers into smartphones, which helped the company recover from the dot-com bust and create a new category of hand-held devices.
Chief Executive Greg Brown is desperate to find a manager to turn around Motorola's mobile-devices division, which has lost $1.6 billion since January 2007, when its hit Razr phone ran out of steam. The division has been reeling since the departure in February 2007 of chief Ron Garriques and the subsequent exodus of most of the division's senior executives. Mr. Garriques had clashed over strategy with then-chief executive Ed Zander, who resigned under pressure in December.
Write to Justin Scheck at justin.scheck@wsj.com |
