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

To: Harry Landsiedel who wrote (62370)	6/2/1999 7:52:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 97611

HL - I had always been impressed with the enterprise vision that Rose presented - he was the only CPQ exec who seemed to understand what it would take to turn the supertanker. So I guess I am a little surprised by this move. But you are right, he was probably also on the hook to make the integration work. He may have made commitments to the board which he could not deliver on, or he may have left because he didn't get tapped for the COO position. BTW, I don't see the COO as really adding another layer - since everything in the company except staff functions seems to report to the COO, it is more likely a consolidation of the "inside guy" function as a placeholder for the future "office of the CEO" structure. This may mean that they have a good idea of how they want to structure the CEO position. In the minutes of the first meeting with Ben and the crew which were passed along by she_x from the yahoo thread, Frank Doyle made some comments in that regard - "you need an inside guy to focus on operations, and an outside guy to focus on the customers, and in a big company it's almost impossible for one guy to cover both things adequately" or something like that, referring to his time in the office of the CEO at GE with Jack Welch. I don't think Rose is a likely candidate for the CEO slot at HP but stranger things have happened. I also heard that EP might be under consideration for that slot. Rose was the guy who drove CPQ to #1 in PCs, so he certainly has the track record. But EP also has as good a set of credentials in that space as one can get - except maybe Michael Dell, and HP is channel-based like CPQ so EP's experience is more relevant.