Robert P. Wayman (born July 5, 1945) was the former

chief financial officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

(CFO) of the

Hewlett-Packard Company The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

from 1984 to 2006. He served as the company's interim

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

in 2005, and was an executive vice president, as well as a member of the H-P board of directors. He died on July 22, 2022.

Early life and education

Wayman is a Chicago native. He attended

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, Wil ...

, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in science engineering and a

Master of Business Administration A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

Career

Robert Wayman joined the Hewlett-Packard Company in 1969 as a cost accountant at its

Loveland, Colorado The City of Loveland is the home rule municipality that is the second most populous municipality in Larimer County, Colorado, United States. Loveland is situated north of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver and is the 14th most populous city ...

office, after a few years he moved to the company's headquarters at

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

, where he held a number of finance positions before he was appointed as the company's CFO in 1984, he then reported to former CEO

John Young John Young may refer to: Academics * John Young (professor of Greek) (died 1820), Scottish professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow * John C. Young (college president) (1803–1857), American educator, pastor, and president of Centre Coll ...

. He served on the company's board of directors from 1993 to 2002, and rejoined the board in 2005. In February 2005, he was appointed an interim CEO, following

Carly Fiorina Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina ('' née'' Sneed; born September 6, 1954) is an American businesswoman and politician, known primarily for her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP). As chief executive officer of HP from 1999 to 2005, Fiorina wa ...

departure as a result of pressures from the board of directors; Wayman retained his finance responsibilities, and served in the top executive role until

Mark Hurd Mark Vincent Hurd (January 1, 1957 – October 18, 2019) was an Americans, American technology executive who served as Co-CEO and as a member of the board of directors of Oracle Corporation. He had previously served as Chairman, Chief Executive ...

assumed the position in March 2005. The board of directors approved a $3 million bonus for his 52-day service as CEO, an unusual payout, that led to questions by some corporate governance experts and employees, but was defended by the company. On December 11, 2006, after 37 years with the company, Robert Wayman announced his retirement, which became effective on December 31. He was succeeded by Cathie Lesjak. In a Financial Times interview, Wayman said he began to plan for retirement since 2002 but reiterated due to the company's controversial deal to acquire

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

. Wayman joined the Santa Clara-based

Affymetrix Affymetrix is now Applied Biosystems, a brand of DNA microarray products sold by Thermo Fisher Scientific that originated with an American biotechnology research and development and manufacturing company of the same name. The Santa Clara, Califor ...

board of directors on March 19, 2007, until it was acquired by

Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is an American supplier of scientific instrumentation, reagents and consumables, and software services. Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, Thermo Fisher was formed through the merger of Thermo Electron and Fisher S ...

in 2016. He was a board member of

Sybase Sybase, Inc. was an enterprise software and services company. The company produced software to manage and analyze information in relational databases, with facilities located in California and Massachusetts. Sybase was acquired by SAP in 2010; ...

, until it was sold in 2010. He also served as director in other corporation boards, including Con-Way Inc., and

CareFusion CareFusion was a medical company specializing in two areas: reducing medication errors and prevention of health care-associated infections. Spinoff CareFusion was created in 2009 as a spinoff of medical technology businesses from Cardinal Heal ...

. He currently serves on the board of the nonprofit V Foundation for Cancer Research. He is a member of the Advisory Board to Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

References

External links

HP biography
(archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Wayman, Robert Hewlett-Packard people Living people American computer businesspeople Northwestern University alumni American chief financial officers Kellogg School of Management alumni American technology chief executives Businesspeople from Chicago 1945 births