IBM Corp has had to call in the headhunters again to find itself a new chief financial officer: it has tapped Russell Reynolds Associates, and the executive search firm says that it was actually hired by IBM prior to appointment of Louis Gerstner as chairman and chief executive. The firm says it is doing work for IBM in other areas but declined to be more specific, although that suggests that IBM may have taken on board the message that it needs outsiders to run some of its key business units. IBM now has 13 autonomous business units, with nine focused on specific product lines, and it is widely suggested that some of these need heavyweight industry veterans to run them effectively. IBM also has an opening for a president, but it is not certain whether Gerstner wants a president.
