IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty is Stepping Down

Shares of IBM were soaring on Thursday after Wall Street learned that the company’s CEO Ginni Rometty would be stepping down.

The stock jumped as much as 5% on the news.

Arvind Krishna will be taking over and will become IBM’s 10th CEO. The change is expected to be effective on April 6th.
Krishna, 57, is one of IBM’s top executives, having joined the company in 1990. He’s currently IBM’s senior vice president for cloud and cognitive software.

Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s former CEO, will be becoming IBM’s president, the company also said. It was last July that IBM completed its $34 billion Red Hat acquisition.

Rometty, 62 had become IBM president and CEO on January 1, 2012.

According to the company’s website, Rometty led the “successful integration of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, creating a global team of more than 100,000 business consultants and services experts.”

During her tenure as CEO however, the stock has fallen about 26%.

Rometty will remain the company’s executive chairman through the end of the year, IBM said.

Rometty calls Krishna a “brilliant technologist who has played a significant role in developing our key technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing and blockchain” as well as a “superb operational leader.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in IBM Common Stock (NYSE: IBM) and have not been compensated for this article.