The controversial former American Air CEO, Don Carty, was named as Dell Inc.'s (DELL) new vice chairman and chief financial officer today.
Carty has been on the board of directors since 1992 and will assume his new duties Jan. 1.
Dell faces stiff competition from Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and others and hopes run high that Carty will lead the turnaround plan, announced several months ago to boost sales and improve customer service, to success. The plan, dubbed "Dell 2.0," has inspired the company to make a series of executive changes, luring five executives from General Motors Corp.(GM), HP, Amazon.com (AMZN) and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) in recent months.
According to this MSNBC.com article, just last week Dell tapped a former executive at computer services company Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) t
o assist in leadership of the company's $4.9 million global services division.
Carty served as CEO of American Air from 1998 to 2003, when he resigned due to the loss of confidence of workers. In a nutshell, under his leadership American Air lost more than $6 billion in two years and he turned to the employees to ask for $1.8 billion in annual concessions to avoid filing for bankruptcy.
The employees went along with the plan, albeit grudgingly, until they found out that the company had secretly approved bonuses and pension perks for Carty and other senior executives.
Carty will be replacing James M. Schneider, senior vice president and CFO, who will be moving to the position of executive chairman of the board of Frontier Bancshares Inc.
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