IBM Corp shares yesterday lost much of the lustre they had picked up over several trading days last week after the Wall Street Journal ran a major article – which oozed incredulity, making it clear that chief executive John Akers had the full support of the board. The piece made it equally clear that that carries none of the kiss-of-death overtones that attend an announcement from the chairman of a struggling British soccer club that he has full confidence in the manager. The paper identified the eminence grise among IBM’s non-executive directors as James Burke, described as the retired Johnson & Johnson chief legendary for his handling of the Tylenol poisonings a decade ago. The Journal is unable to conceal its shock at the burden of the story, saying baldly that under Mr Akers, IBM has bungled the epochal shift to desktop computers, lost its dominance of the computer business, and plunged into the worst crisis in its history. It also reports that as well as the 60,000-member Washington-based United Shareholders Association, the country’s most activist institutional investor, California’s public employee pension fund, now also has IBM in its sights as one of its top targets for a major shakeup.
