Let's hope HP's head hunter knows what it's doing. The company just went for the mystery price behind door number three in the quest for a new CEO and out came Mark Hurd.

"Mark who?" you ask? Mark Hurd. Up until today he was CEO for NCR, a company best known for making ATMs and other financial solutions for the retail industry. It made a tidy $6 bn in revenues last year, but that is still nothing compared to HP's $80 bn.

The guy's appointment couldn’t mean a bigger break with the past, the era when celebrity CEO Carly Fiorina held the helm at the printer and computer company.

Hurd worked at the same company for 25 years, slowly rising to the number one position. When he became CEO in 2003, he found a company in trouble. Revenues had plummeted. So Hurd started cutting costs like crazy and within months turned the company around.

That might be an admirable feat, but to be quite honest Hurd strikes me as extremely boring and lacking any vision.

What was HP's board of directors looking for? A CEO that would save HP by coming up with a new strategy that would change the world? Or someone more obedient, who would dutiful listen to the board and respectfully execute their plans?

Since they got the first with Carly Fiorina, HP's board seems to have chosen the latter now that the little Fiorina experiment has gone wrong.

Investors clearly like Hurd for now. The company's stock jumped 10 percent after the announcement.

30 Mar 2005