Hewlett-Packard Breaks Into Two Units to Stay Competitive

 

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) is splitting into two companies, using a breakup to become nimbler after failing to keep up with the shift away from the printing and personal-computing businesses it pioneered.

Chief Executive Officer, Meg Whitman, will lead Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, a new company focusing on corporate hardware and services, while Dion Weisler, the vice president in charge of personal-computer and printer operations, will become CEO of that business, called HP Inc., Hewlett-Packard said in a statement today.

Whitman is reversing an earlier position that the company should remain a single enterprise. When she took the helm in September 2011, as the fourth CEO in 2 1/2 years, she ended plans by her predecessor to spin off the PC unit. Hewlett-Packard, which had set the pace in computers for decades, had embarked on a rapid expansion plan through acquisitions -- some of them controversial.