HP CEO Meg Whitman Confirms It Will Split On 1 November

HP CEO Meg Whitman has confirmed the company will split into two units on 1 November, finalising the schedule for the separation first revealed late last year.

The move will see HP Inc look after the firm’s PC and printing businesses, while Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will focus on corporate hardware services, encompassing the firm’s storage, server and networking units as well as its cloud infrastructure and services unit.

HP Split confirmed

Whitman has resisted pressure from analysts and shareholders to sell off the company’s PC business, a move also suggested by former CEO Leo Apotheker, arguing computers were important to HP’s overall business.

Shortly after she assumed the top job, Whitman combined the PC unit with its more profitable printing business, paving the way for the split.

HP is the world’s second largest PC manufacturer behind Lenovo and the logic behind the split is that both new companies will be more agile and able to better serve their respective markets. Both will be publicly traded companies with more than $50 billion in annual sales.  It was reported last year that HP had more than 400 employees working on the separation of the current company.

HP Enterprise will be strengthened by the £2 billion acquisition of Aruba Networks announced in March – it’s biggest takeover since the troubled purchase of Autonomy in 2011. The firm sold a majority stake in its H3C Chinese hardware business for £1.5 billion last month.

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