IBM chief Ginni Rometty to step down
Cloud business boss Arvind Krishna to succeed.
by Staff WriterIBM chief executive Ginni Rometty will step down after eight years in the role and will be succeeded by the head of its cloud business Arvind Krishna in April.
Rometty, who has been with the company for 40 years, will continue as executive chairman and will retire at the end of the year, the company said.
Shares of the company were up nearly 4 percent in extended trading.
An IBM statement offers no reason for the change, but lead director of the IBM board of directors Michael Eskew said the change was the result of "a world-class succession process".
"Ginni has provided outstanding leadership for IBM, substantially transforming the company and ushering in a new cloud and cognitive era," he said.
"She has taken bold strategic actions to reposition IBM for the future, shedding businesses and growing new units organically and through acquisition, all while achieving record diversity and employee engagement and setting the industry standard for responsible technology ethics and data stewardship."
Krishna, 57, who joined IBM in 1990, was the architect of the company's US$34 billion (A$50.6 billion) acquisition of Red Hat last year.
"Arvind is the right CEO for the next era at IBM," Rometty, 62, said in a statement.
Under Rometty's leadership, IBM has shifted focus to cloud business through a series of acquisitions and by selling some of its legacy units.
Rometty's departure comes just weeks after IBM's Asia Pacific CEO and chairman Harriet Green announced she would be stepping down after more than four years in the role.
Green has been replaced by Brenda Harvey, who takes the new Asia Pacific general manager role.
With Justin Hendry