On June 21, 2018, Intel (INTC -0.65%) announced the resignation of Brian Krzanich, who had been appointed CEO of the chip giant back in May of 2013 following the retirement of Paul Otellini. At the time of Krzanich's resignation, the company assured investors that "the board has a robust succession planning process in place and has begun a search for a permanent CEO, including both internal and external candidates."
It's been more than six months, and the company has yet to name Krzanich's full-time successor. Permanent CFO Bob Swan, who joined Intel in October of 2016 as CFO after former Intel CFO Stacy Smith took up a manufacturing-related leadership role in the company, continues to serve as interim CEO as the search goes on.
Image source: Intel.
On Jan. 14, Bloomberg provided an update on what's going on with the search as well as the potential timing for the completion of the search. Let's take a closer look.
What's been going on?
Bloomberg's Ian King wrote the following:
Intel directors have ruled out some candidates for the vacant chief executive officer post, passed up obvious ones, been rejected by some and decided to go back and reinterview others, extending the search, according to people familiar with the process.
Indeed, according to the report, "[possible] candidates such as Sanjay Jha, Anand Chandrasekher and Renee James are no longer involved, the people said."
In case you're not familiar with those names, Jha most recently served as the CEO of pure-play contract chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries, Chandrasekher was last seen heading up Qualcomm's (QCOM -0.90%) failed efforts to crack Intel's dominance in data center chips, and Renee James -- formerly president of Intel -- is the CEO of Ampere Computing, a small, venture capital-backed company that builds Arm-based data center chips. (Ampere Computing is a reincarnation of Applied Micro's unsuccessful computer chip business.)
The report doesn't, however, explicitly name the candidates that are still in the running. Back in September, Bloomberg said that, in addition to the names that have been crossed off the list, current Intel data center group (DCG) chief Navin Shenoy as well as current Intel chief engineering officer Murthy Renduchintala were under consideration.
Getting a move on
Bloomberg also reports that Intel is "trying" to conclude the search before it announces its fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 results on Jan. 24, although that doesn't sound like a firm commitment. In a December interview with Barron's, Swan was quoted as saying that "[this] is the biggest and best open job in the world" and that "[the] board doesn't want to rush its decision."
Another interesting tidbit from the Bloomberg report is that current Intel chairman Andy Bryant apparently "told some employees that the chipmaker may go with a 'non-traditional candidate,'" which the publication took to mean that "a CEO from outside the company is a possibility."
It'll be interesting to see who Intel's board winds up picking for the role and, more importantly, what that new CEO's vision for the company will ultimately be.
