Lewis Platt, 64; Had Top Posts at Hewlett-Packard and Boeing

Lewis Platt, who rose from an entry-level engineer to chairman and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co., died Thursday in California. He was 64.

Platt most recently was lead director of Boeing Co., where he served as chairman of the world’s biggest aircraft maker from December 2003 until July. Boeing spokesman John Dern declined to comment on the cause of death.

Platt spent 33 years at Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest computer printer maker. He rose from an engineer in the medical products group in 1966 to president and chief executive. In 1993, he succeeded co-founder David Packard as chairman and served as president and chief executive until he retired in 1999. Carly Fiorina was tapped to succeed him.

“He had integrity, more integrity than most anyone I know,” Ray Lane, a former chief executive of Oracle Corp. who met Platt in 1992, said Friday. “Whatever he told you, you could take to the bank.”

In 2000, a year after leaving Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard, Platt began what he called his second career as chief executive of winemaker Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates Ltd. in Santa Rosa. He left a year later, saying he wanted more time for fishing and philanthropy.

“Lew cared deeply for HP and its people, and his loss is being felt widely across our company,” Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd said in an e-mailed statement. “The way he treated people and how he ran the company set an exceptionally high standard of personal decency.”

Under Platt’s direction, Hewlett-Packard’s sales growth averaged 24% a year from 1992 to 1997. He made the cover of Forbes magazine when Hewlett-Packard was named company of the year in 1995.

Platt’s strategy included expanding beyond computers and printers and getting into such consumer products as digital cameras and Internet appliances that could grab and manipulate information from the global computer network.

One of his last actions as the head of Hewlett-Packard was to oversee the split of the company into two businesses. Hewlett-Packard kept the personal computer and printer operation. Agilent Technologies Inc. took the medical device and electronic-testing business.

“Lew successfully led us through a period of rapid growth and great market turmoil,” Hewlett-Packard Chief Financial Officer Bob Wayman said Friday in an e-mail to employees. “People he worked with, whether they were an employee, a customer or a community leader, were left with one overriding impression, ‘What a great human being.’ ”

As non-executive chairman of Chicago-based Boeing, Platt supported an aggressive airliner sales campaign after former Chairman Harry Stonecipher was ousted for having an affair with a female executive.

Supporting Boeing’s international sales staff, Platt traveled abroad to clinch deals against No. 1 rival Airbus SAS. He also was credited with persuading former 3M Co. Chief Executive James McNerney to replace Stonecipher after McNerney originally turned down the job in a public statement.

“He was a fine business leader who strongly supported our communities, and he did so with great integrity and ethics,” Larry Sonsini, chairman of the Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and an advisor to Hewlett-Packard’s board, said in an e-mailed statement. “His strength of character is a loss to the technology industry.”

Platt, born April 11, 1941, in Johnson City, N.Y., had a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a master’s of business administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Former President Clinton named Platt to the Committee on Trade Policy Negotiations, where he served as chairman of the World Trade Organization Task Force, Hewlett-Packard said in a statement to employees.

Platt, who retired to his Bodega, Calif., ranch after leaving Kendall-Jackson, is survived by his wife, Joan, and their children, Hewlett-Packard said.