IBM Names New Chief Financial Officer

International Business Machines Corp said on Thursday Chief Financial Officer Martin Schroeter will take on a new role and will be replaced by company veteran James Kavanaugh, effective Jan. 11.

Kavanaugh, who served as senior vice president of transformation and operations, replaces Schroeter, who had served as CFO since 2014. The latter will take on the role of senior vice president of global markets.

The change went into effect on Thursday. Both Kavanaugh and Schroeter will lead IBM’s upcoming earnings report on January 18.

“It’s very common for BM to make senior executive changes at the start of the year, so this is not out of the ordinary in that sense,” an IBM spokesperson said.

Schroeter, 53, will replace Bruno Di Leo, who is retiring after 42 years with the company.

In his new job, Schroeter will be mostly responsible for sales in Japan, Asia Pacific, Latin America, China, Middle East and Africa, the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Kavanaugh has deep roots in finance and has held various positions at IBM. At AT&T, he was the CFO of the company's Americas Global Services unit.

His most recent role focused on “enabling IBM’s transformation to a data driven cognitive enterprise,” according to his company profile. At IBM, “cognitive” refers to the company’s work in artificial intelligence and machine learning, including its Jeopardy-winning computer system Watson. Kavanaugh focused on using cognitive analytics for internal transformation at the company.

IBM, one of the world's original PC producers, but now a broad-based producer, integrator and software maker, beat expectations for revenue in its last quarterly results in October after 22 straight quarters of declines.

IBM to Lay Off 30% of its Staff

News of the transition comes just hours after a report that IBM plans to lay off 30% of the staff in its computer service delivery business, which would affect around 3090 jobs.

The news site published a slide it said was from an IBM internal presentation, which showed 10,100 jobs classified as "attrition w/o backfill."

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