Search for a New HP CEO to Be Over Soon?

After what has been quite a busy month (understatement of the century?) with multiple acquisitions and a scandal the eventually left to to the dismissal of successful but controversial CEO Mark Hurd, HP is reportedly very close to appointing a new CEO. While interim CEO Cathie Lesjak has held down the fort adequately, she has expressed no interest in staying on in the position permanently. As we reported earlier this summer, HP hired a firm to search for a new CEO soon after Hurd’s departure. According to DailyFinance, the list of potential candidates has been whittled down to a few internal candidates:

“…the senior executives under consideration are Vyomesh Joshi, who runs HP’s printer business; Todd Bradley, head of the personal computer division; Dave Donatelli, who runs the storage and server unit; Tom Hogan, executive vice president of enterprise sales and marketing; and Ann Livermore, executive vice president of the enterprise business.”

HP’s choice of CEO will have far-reaching consequences for the future of Palm and webOS. Todd Bradley would seem to be the ideal choice for any Palm fan, as he is not only the current head of personal systems within which Palm is contained, but is a former Palm CEO and would thus have a more intimate knowledge of personal and portable devices then any of the other CEO options.  It must be remembered that the personal systems division is but a small portion of HP’s total revenue stream which is dominated by printers and enterprise hardware and services. Whoever is chosen, DailyFinance believes HP will make a choice within the next week.

[Source: DailyFinance via Bloomberg... thanks to @TeckieGirl for the tip!]