HP CEO Meg Whitman has reshuffled her senior team in advance of the announcement of what is expected to be lacklustre financial results later today.
Chief operating officer Bill Veghte will replace Dave Donatelli as head of HP's enterprise group, while Whitman will promote Henry Gomez, chief of communications, to chief marketing officer, replacing Marty Homlish.
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Donatelli and Homlish, meanwhile, will be given new roles. Donatelli, who joined the company from EMC in 2009, before Whitman was appointed CEO, has reportedly not got on well with Whitman.
The reshuffling, revealed by Bloomberg news and not yet publicly announced, comes ahead of quarterly financial results that will be published later today.
They are expected to show significant falls in PC and laptop sales, and moribund enterprise hardware, software and services sales.
According to Bloomberg's average of analysts' estimates, third quarter sales will decline by eight per cent to $27.3bn, while net income - profit - will fall by 14 per cent.
Whitman has struggled to turn the sprawling company around since her appointment as CEO at the tail end of 2011. Prior to her appointment as CEO, HP had acquired a string of companies for sums widely regarded to be far in excess of their true value.
Whitman had just joined the board of HP while the company was in the process of acquiring the last of these companies, software vendor Autonomy, for which it paid some $10.3bn. Although the architect of the deal, former CEO Leo Apotheker, was thrown overboard mid-way through the purchase, Whitman as the newly appointed CEO of HP chose to complete the deal.
Much of that purchase was subsequently written down after HP accused Autonomy of accounting irregularities, provoking an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into the allegations. HP is now taking legal action against Autonomy's founder and CEO, Mike Lynch.
The price HP paid for Autonomy was almost twice the asking price when it was earlier offered to Oracle, a sum its CEO Larry Ellison regarded as grossly overvaluing the company.
