Telecommunications equipment maker Lucent Technologies Inc. named Patricia Russo as its new CEO in a move designed to reinvigorate its down-trodden operations and complete its restructuring.
Russo, 49, formerly worked for Lucent for some 20 years before resigning and joining Eastman Kodak Co. as president and CEO last April. Russo returns to Lucent to succeed Henry Schacht, 67, who remains Lucent’s chairman of the board.
Russo has her job cut out for her. Lucent has been hit hard by a falling telecommunications market that so far has contributed to the company’s net loss of $16.2 billion in its fiscal year ended Sept. 30. Similar news is expected for Lucent in the coming weeks.
Last month, for instance, Lucent warned that its fiscal first-quarter loss would be larger than Wall Street was expecting because of decreased capital spending by telecom customers.
Despite this, the company maintains that it will return to profitability in its 2002 fiscal year. Already, Lucent has cut its work force to about 77,000 employees from 106,000. That number could be reduced further to about 57,000 workers. The company also has eliminated money-losing or low-profit product lines and sold non-core businesses as part of its restructuring plan.
Russo worked for 20 years at Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent and AT&T Corp. (www.att.com), which spun off Lucent in 1996. During her time there, Russo led the core business that served large telephone carriers, as well as the restructuring of Lucent's then second-largest business that is now Avaya Inc., which makes technology for operator call centers and cabling systems for corporate campuses.
Before joining AT&T in 1981, Russo spent eight years in sales and marketing management at International Business Machines Corp.
She joins Carly Fiorina, another former Lucent executive and now CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., as one of the few women running a large corporation in the United States.
