Infrastructure

Home page

Infrastructure

IBM Names Virginia Rometty as New Chief Executive

26 October 2011 12:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku - APA-Economics. Virginia M. Rometty, a senior vice president at I.B.M., will be the companyâ€™s next chief executive, the directors announced on Tuesday. She will succeed Samuel J. Palmisano, 60, who will remain as chairman, at the start of next year, New York Times reported.

Ms. Rometty, 54, is well known within the technology industry, but not widely beyond. She has led strategically important divisions of the company as it has shifted to services and products with high profit margins, like software that mines vast troves of corporate and online data for sales and cost-saving opportunities.

The directorsâ€™ choice of Ms. Rometty, who managed a crucial merger as well as sales in fast-growing new markets, ends a competition that has been under way for years. The leading candidates were always from within the companyâ€™s executive ranks.

The selection of Ms. Rometty for the top job at I.B.M. will make her one of the most prominent women executives in corporate America, joining a small group of chiefs that includes Ursula Burns of Xerox, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Ellen J. Kullman of DuPont and Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard. Gender, according to Mr. Palmisano, did not figure into Ms. Romettyâ€™s selection.