IBM’s Haggerty to Become President of Western Digital
In a sign that longtime chairman Roger W. Johnson is relaxing his grip on the reins of Western Digital Corp., the computer products company announced Tuesday the appointment of a new top executive.
Charles A. Haggerty, now at IBM, will take the new position of president and chief operating officer. He will report directly to Johnson, who during the past decade built Western Digital into a billion-dollar company but recently said he needs help running it.
“I have too many jobs,” Johnson, chairman and chief executive, said Tuesday. “I was going to do this a year ago but had to put it off while we dealt with our financial problems.”
Haggerty’s task is formidable. The company has been unprofitable for seven quarters and reported a loss of $18.6 million for the three months that ended March 31. Johnson said the company hopes to break even, however, for its fourth fiscal quarter, which ends June 30.
Haggerty, who spent 28 years at IBM in varied management and executive jobs, said he hopes to continue Western Digital’s financial recovery.
“Certainly Western has had difficulties over the past 18 months or so,” Haggerty said. “One or two (positive) points on a graph does not make a trend.”
Johnson, 57, said in an interview with The Times in December that he was considering giving up one title and laying out a clear line of succession.
On Tuesday, Johnson said he will focus on strategic issues while Haggerty will manage day-to-day operations. Johnson also said he has no plans to retire.
Analysts said that, because the industry is only beginning to recover from the recession, Johnson is not likely to leave soon.
“I don’t think (Johnson) is going to give up yet,” said Paul Weinstein, an analyst at Kidder Peabody & Co., a New York investment bank.
Weinstein said Haggerty built a reputation by aggressively expanding IBM’s disk drive business in the past year.
Johnson said Haggerty made a name for himself over the years in some of IBM’s most entrepreneurial businesses. He was plant manager, for example, at the Florida factory where IBM launched its first personal computer in 1981. Later, he successfully guided the company into minicomputers with the AS/400 line.
He is now vice president of Worldwide OEM Storage Marketing in Sommers, N.Y., a computer storage unit at IBM.
Haggerty, 50, will join Western Digital on June 1. Kathryn A. Braun, executive vice president in charge of disk drive sales, will report to Haggerty, as will other operations officers.
Vice Chairman George L. Bragg and the company’s chief financial officer, Scott D. Mercer, will report to Johnson.
