IBM CEO Arvind Krishna to Succeed Rometty As Chairman
IBM’s board of directors appointed CEO Arvind Krishna as its chairman, taking over from executive chairman and former chief executive Ginni Rometty, who is retiring at the end of the year
IBM’s board of directors appointed CEO Arvind Krishna as its chairman, taking over from executive chairman and former chief executive Ginni Rometty, who is retiring at the end of the year, after a nearly 40-year career with IBM, the company said in a press release.
The move, which was disclosed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday, comes after Krishna, a longtime IBM executive, replaced Rometty as CEO in April, making him the Armonk, N.Y.-based company’s 10th chief executive.
Krishna joined IBM in 1990 and has held senior leadership roles. Prior to that he served as senior vice president for cloud and cognitive software and was instrumental in the company’s acquisition of Red Hat.
IBM announced in October plans to spin off its managed infrastructure services unit to create two public companies. Krishna said then that the move will enable IBM to focus on open hybrid cloud platform and artificial intelligence capabilities.
After graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Krishna went on to pursue PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the co-author of 15 patents, has been the editor of IEEE and ACM journals, and has published extensively in technical conferences and journals.
On his CEO appointment in January, Rometty said Krishna is a “brilliant technologist who has played a significant role in developing our key technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing and blockchain. He is also a superb operational leader, able to win today while building the business of tomorrow.”
Rometty’s tenure as a CEO was also quite eventful for IBM, albeit there were ups and downs. During her tenure she made bold changes to reposition IBM for the future, investing in high value segments of the IT market and optimizing the company’s portfolio.
Rometty’s retirement will mark an end to the executive’s four-decades of tenure at the company, for which she “took bold strategic actions to reposition IBM for the hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence era,” according to IBM.
In a letter to Rometty filed with the SEC, IBM said the company may seek consulting services from her in the three years following her retirement. For every day she provides such services as an independent contractor, she will receive $20,000. If she works less than four hours in a day, she will receive $10,000 instead. IBM will also cover any related travel expenses and let her use company aircraft with Krishna’s prior approval.
