Gianfranco Lanci Named Lenovo Corporate President in Addition to Company COO Role
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC, March 19, 2015 – Lenovo (HK:992) (ADR:LNVGY) today announced a realignment of its business groups and geographies following the successful integration of its latest acquisitions, putting in place an organizational structure designed to drive even greater speed, synergy and global growth.
In a new leadership role, Gianfranco Lanci has been named Corporate President of Lenovo effective April 1.
Lanci becomes leader of all of Lenovo’s geographic sales organizations and adds responsibility for the company’s Enterprise Business Group to his existing role as head of its PC Business Group. He will have global, end-to-end responsibility for performance and business management systems in these areas, while retaining his current position as Lenovo Chief Operating Officer. Lanci joined Lenovo in April 2012 and has 30 years’ experience across the PC business, including leadership roles at Texas Instruments and Acer.
Lenovo also announced the appointment of Gerry Smith to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of PC & EBG (Personal Computer and Enterprise Business Group), reporting to Lanci. In his expanded role, Smith will have responsibility for harnessing growth and profitability for two core businesses that today account for more than 80 percent of total revenue, and leading Global Operations for these businesses.
Currently, Smith leads Lenovo’s Enterprise Business Group and Americas region. Smith joined Lenovo in 2006 and has a proven track record for driving growth through strong leadership and end-to-end execution. He built the world-beating global supply chain that helped elevate Lenovo to the #1 position in PCs.
Lenovo’s latest organizational move reflects a historic year for the company. A decade after its groundbreaking acquisition of IBM’s PC business, Lenovo last year completed its two largest global deals ever, Motorola Mobility, making Lenovo #3 in global smartphones, and the System x server business from IBM, expanding Lenovo’s Enterprise capabilities. At the same time, the company achieved a record high milestone of 20 percent market share as the world’s #1 PC manufacturer while posting record revenues and profits.
“As we approach our new fiscal year, Lenovo is a bigger and more diverse company than ever. With the successful integration of our recent acquisitions, we have three major growth engines – PC, Enterprise and Mobile,” said Yuanqing Yang, chairman and CEO of Lenovo. “So, we must have the right structure and focus on outstanding execution in every market and with every customer. Today, we have a unique opportunity to address these structural needs and best leverage the talents of our leaders and our team while also celebrating the achievements of several of our top leaders.”
Additional leadership roles were announced for PC & EBG, reporting to Smith:
- Jay Parker, promoted to Senior Vice President, Enterprise Business Group: Parker currently leads Lenovo North America operations and brings deep customer focus, operational expertise and industry knowledge to this critical role.
- Tom Shell, promoted to Senior Vice President, PC Business Group: Shell currently heads Lenovo’s commercial and consumer laptop, desktop, workstation, and monitor business and has been a long-time leader in PCs who has regularly beaten market performance and ensured that PCs remained a healthy, growing business at the heart of Lenovo’s success.
- Johnson Jia, promoted to Senior Vice President of PC & EBG Global Operations: Jia currently plays a key role in global supply chain operations, helping drive strong execution, supplier relations and innovation and flexibility within supply chain.
Lenovo’s two other business groups, Mobile Business Group and Ecosystem and Cloud Services, and their functional leaders remain the same, reporting to CEO Yuanqing Yang.
The company also promoted former VP of Strategy Qingtong Zhou to the role of Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer.
With today’s announcement, Lenovo is realigning its geographic structure to split the previous Americas Group into two – Latin America will continue to be led by Luca Rossi, and North America will be managed by Lanci in the interim while a search is conducted for a permanent leader. Lenovo will continue to operate as before in its other geographies – China, led by Tong Fuyao; EMEA, led by Aymar de Lencquesaing; and Asia-Pacific, led by Rod Lappin. All of these organizations report to Lanci.
About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a $39 billion global Fortune 500 company and a leader in providing innovative consumer, commercial, and enterprise technology. Our portfolio of high-quality, secure products and services covers PCs (including the legendary Think and multimode YOGA brands), workstations, servers, storage, smart TVs and a family of mobile products like smartphones (including the Motorola brand), tablets and apps. Join us on LinkedIn, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@Lenovo) or visit us at www.lenovo.com.
