By @SiliconANGLE
Publication Date: 2025-12-29 00:29:00
Louis Gerstner, the former Chief Executive Officer credited with saving IBM Corp. from bankruptcy, has died aged 83, the company revealed on Sunday.
Gerstner (pictured) served as Chairman and CEO of IBM from 1993 to 2002, taking over during one of the darkest periods in the company’s history, when it was rapidly losing relevance in the face of stiff competition from Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc.
IBM’s current chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna announced Gerstner’s passing in an email to employees, but did not provide a cause of death. He wrote that one of first and most decisive actions was to abandon a plan to split the company, known as “Big Blue”, into a number of “Baby Blues” that would have focused on specific products, such as personal computers, software and semiconductors. According to Krishna, this decision was key to the company’s survival and later revival. “Lou understood that clients didn’t want fragmented technology, they wanted…