HP's Networking Chief Leaves For An Investment Firm

Hewlett-Packard’s networking head, Marius Haas, has left the company for a job at investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Haas had helped HP to acquire networking technology maker 3Com last year, giving HP the capability to compete with enterprise networking giant Cisco on a larger scale. 3com brought a range of routing and networking products to HP.

HP said in a statement that Haas will leave the company after June 1 and the company is looking for a replacement for Haas. Before he was appointed as the head of networking, Haas was the  senior vice president, chief strategy officer and global head of corporate mergers and acquisitions

The company said that Bethany Mayer, vice president of worldwide marketing and alliances for Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, will be acting as the head of the networking division until the company finds a replacement.

His departure follows a string of high profile managerial changes at HP which came after the controversial appointment of Leo Apothekar as the company’s chief executive officer.

Last month, the company appointed Martin Homlish as the executive vice president and Thomas Hogan as the new sales, marketing and strategy chief for its enterprise business, PC World reports.