By Khadija Saeed
Publication Date: 2025-12-28 17:17:00
Louis V. “Lou” Gerstner Jr., the hard-charging executive widely credited with pulling IBM back from the brink in the 1990s and repositioning “Big Blue” for the internet era, has died at 83, IBM confirmed Sunday. IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna told employees that Gerstner, who led the company from 1993 to 2002, “passed away yesterday,” and the company did not disclose a cause of death. [1]
Gerstner arrived at IBM at a moment Krishna described as “genuinely uncertain,” when rapid industry change and internal debate left open the question of whether the company should “remain whole.” In Krishna’s telling, the defining signature of Gerstner’s tenure wasn’t nostalgia for IBM’s glory years—it was relentless focus on what customers would need next, paired with a willingness to rework culture and execution to match that reality. [2]
The outsider IBM called when the stakes were existential
When Gerstner took the helm in 1993, IBM was a corporate icon under…