Thread regarding IBM layoffs

I’m not sure Lou was the last “good” CEO. He certainly did what he was hired to do in his first 3 years (Eg refocus IBM and stream line IBM) (13 levels of management went down to 8, 60k worth of heads went out the door, and he decided we were going to transition from a technology company to a services and technology company). In his second 3 years Lou kinda sat back and collected his 500 million in options and let Sam take over. Ginni inherited the financial planning of Sam. That was her first great mistake (running with that for 4 years vs changing plan after 1 year). By the time she realized that financial planning wasn’t going to feed the bulldog, cloud had passed her by, and she had to cut back on everything (head count, research, technology, etc etc). She tried to save her way to greatness, and all that did was stop IBM from intivating and as such IBM shriveled up. Now the damage has been done, in that customers have moved on, and relationships were killed due to the layoffs. It’s the old Humpty Dumpty tune. “All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put Humpty together again”. That’s where IBM is at present. Too much talent has left to recover. Ginni is now in the John Aikers position. Break IBM apart to extract shareholder value

Last good CEO was Lou Gestner.....

The city traders are showing signs they think something big is in the making regarding IBM: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/options-traders-know-something-ibm-124112813.html?.tsrc=applewf

RAmetty was an engineer from old days - IBM needs someone that understands business and technology, and have a team with vision. What was the last software IBM produced that was good??? brought a lot - innovated ------ Zero that i can think of -- dont say watson as theyve had that for close to 6 years and not reaaly done anything woth it

@1myi China is

Hail India! India is superpower.

What if the "strategic initiatives" that are now failing are doing EXACTLY what they are supposed to do?

What if the some of the borrowing to fund these failures is secured by IBM's IP which would leave certain creditors with the only real asset IBM has and leave the operating businesses to be sold for scrap?

I am sure the executives that delivered the valuable IP into the hands of well connected folks on Wall Street for pennies on the dollar will be well compensated while the employees, stockholders and creditors will be left with nothing.

Split possibly save some business of IBM, otherwise, all have to go to die.

Rommetty has to go. She is absolutely terrible. IBM needs to get back to it's roots and hire an engineering leader. Someone who can right the ship. Take a page out of MSFT playbook and put a techie in charge.

Hi BXF. I completely agree with you, that the board is Looking for a new CEO. The current CEO has demonstrated a complete lack of leadership, or understanding of how the market place has moved on her. Her response to the last 6 years has been to save her way to prosperity via cutting the legacy work force. You don’t hire Bain unless you have plans to split, or to be acquired as undervalued assets. Someone on the board has looked at the path of destruction created and realized that they need to sell half of the company to raise cash so that they can enhance the remaining half of the company. My guess is IBM will embrace a new CEO and give them permission to use the money raised to acquire something new. If I had to guess it’s going to be something along the LINUX line. Why do I say that??? IBM has placed most of their eggs in the LINUX basket over the last three years (Z Linux, Power LINUX, Redhat partnership, google partnership, all cloud investments revolve around LINUX etc etc etc.). Services as IBM has been dividing them up is the weak sister. (Eg offshore completely divorces LINUX, while near shore embraces cheap LINUX labor, and on shore embraces selling LINUX Camss services) The HW both Z and Power have bet the farm on LINUX while milking legacy and DASD has bet the farm on SW which is embraced via cloud. NET NET the new CEO will be allowed to buy their way into LINUX, and have a much leaner IBM to manage.

Hard to believe... rumor has it that the board is looking for a new CEO outside the company.