John Akers was president, chief executive officer and chairman of IBM.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,526 |
15 Facts About John Akers
2.
John Akers joined IBM in 1960 after serving in the Navy as a jet pilot.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,527 |
3.
John Akers benefitted from the support of one of his predecessors, Frank Cary.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,528 |
4.
John Akers was chief executive during IBM's decline in the mid-1980s and early 1990s.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,529 |
5.
John Akers was credited with simplifying the company's bureaucracy to focus more on profits.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,530 |
6.
On January 29,1988, in a sweeping restructuring intended to reverse three years of disappointing performance, John Akers created five new, highly autonomous organizations responsible for all of the company's innovation, design, and manufacturing.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,531 |
7.
John Akers' vision was to autonomize each division into "Baby Blues" with the aim of spinning them off from "Big Blue".
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,532 |
8.
John Akers presided over a major downsizing of IBM's workforce, cutting down from 407,000 to 360,000 by the end of 1991.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,533 |
9.
John Akers had previously had a lifetime employment policy but successive voluntary buyouts and the first-ever layoff in March 1993, caused a morale crisis.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,534 |
10.
John Akers closed ten plants and trimmed manufacturing capacity by forty percent.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,535 |
11.
On Tuesday, January 26,1993, John Akers was forced to announce his resignation, after several months of IBM insisting that it had full confidence in his leadership.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,536 |
12.
John Akers remained as chief executive for three months while a committee of directors chose a successor, long speculated to be an outsider.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,537 |
13.
John Akers was succeeded in both positions by Gerstner, the first CEO in IBM's history to attain the position from outside the company.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,538 |
14.
John Akers was on the board of directors of Lehman Brothers when it filed for bankruptcy.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,539 |
15.
John Akers died of a stroke at age 79 in Boston, Massachusetts on August 22,2014.
| FactSnippet No. 1,632,540 |