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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lynn who wrote (56666)	4/10/1999 12:05:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 97611

There is no single candidate for all of the qualities you mention. Enrico Pesatori is a great operational guy, who turned Tandem around on a dime from a company which had lost money for more than 13 quarters to one which was profitable, and he did it through sheer management skill and attention to detail. Everyone who has been close to him says he has very high integrity and is devoted to his job, a "no nonsense" guy who does not spend a lot of time on the politics and infighting which other senior executives seem to relish. He certainly has the experience. I don't know if he is "squeeky-clean" but he is probably as close to that as any major player in the industry. Where they seem to fault Pesatori is in the vision category - he is not as strong technically as most of the other potential CEO candidates and has not displayed the charismatic leadership which ignites great loyalty. When I talk to people outside of CPQ, they seem to lean more toward John Rose. He has the vision to look well down the road and can project that vision in a way which generates energy and excitement. He had a great track record in his early days at CPQ - he was responsible for the creation of the presario line, he took CPQ to #1 in desktops more than a year ahead of his own target and 2 years ahead of the public target. His description of where the company needs to go is not something flat like "$50B by '00". But he has struggled with the Tandem and DEC acquisitions. CPQ insiders say he has been slow to make hard choices to cut back costs in the bloated infrastructures of those companies. Some people I have talked with believe that Rose actually had pushed for a much more immediate and dramatic change in the former DEC and Tandem organizations but was blocked by EP. Probably the ideal solution (assuming that the board stays within CPQ) would be Rose in a CEO role and Pesatori in a COO position. If those two could work together this would in my opinion give key industry partners a lot of confidence in where CPQ is going and also provide CPQ with an executive team which has proven they can execute. I have absolutely no idea if any of this discussion reflects thinking within CPQ. Most of my recent discussions have been with people who are outside of CPQ but work closely with them. In many ways they are as much in the dark about what's happening as we are.