He's Baaack! Michael Dell Again CEO of Company He Founded

After a three year absence in which the company he founded out of his college dorm room lost significant market share to competitors, Michael Dell has reclaimed his spot as Dell CEO from Kevin Rollins. A brief statement by Dell yesterday offered no explanation for why Rollins was resigning and said Dell will take over as CEO "effective immediately." The company has suffered since Rollins took over in 2004. As buying habits have changed in the PC market, Dell's direct company to client model has been undercut by a pairing of discount retailers like Circuit City and Best Buy and discount manufacturers like Lenovo and Acer. While it is unclear whether Dell can successfully help the company to reverse its course and regain lost market share, he certainly inspires faith in Dell shareholders: shares have risen $1.33 (5.49%) to $25.55 in pre-market trading.

Sources: Dell Announcement,Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal
Commentary: Michael Dell Is Back: Was Rollins Pushed Out? • With Michael Dell As CEO Again, Can Dell Regroup? • Michael Dell Has His Work Cut Out
Stocks/ETFs to watch: Dell Inc. (DELL). Competitors: Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Gateway Inc. (GTW), Apple Inc. (AAPL), Lenovo Group Ltd. (LNVGY.PK), Toshiba Corp. (TOSBF.PK). ETFs: Internet Architecture HOLDRs (IAH), iShares Dow Jones US Technology (IYW), Fidelity NASDAQ Comp. Index Trk Stk (ONEQ), iShares Goldman Sachs Technology Indx (IGM)

Seeking Alpha's news summaries are combined into a pre-market briefing called Wall Street Breakfast. Get Wall Street Breakfast by email -- it's free and takes only a few seconds to sign up.

Comments

[Julian Ivan...:]

"He's Baaack!" Actually he never left. This is smoke and mirrors. Dell and Rollins shared an office. Dell said nothing Rollins did was without his agreement, and that they discussed everything, when he came out in Rollins' defence last summer.
Plunging growth, plunging earnings. Falling market share. Uncompetitive products. No pricing power. No USP. A formal SEC investigation. And it gets upgraded?I can't believe the Street can talk this POS company up. Its a pig with a lot of lipstick on and a facefull of Botox, but its still a pig.

2007 Feb 01 09:28 AM