英特爾為物色一位CEO花了7個月之久，最后還是兜兜轉轉地回到了老地方。英特爾的上任CEO科再奇于去年6月突然離職，此后鮑伯·斯萬作為臨時負責人主持了英特爾的日常工作。英特爾在1月底表示，鮑伯·斯萬正式“轉正”，成為英特爾50年歷史上的第七任CEO。

這一決定表明，英特爾在下任CEO的人選上，采取了與過去6任CEO不同的策略。英特爾的前6任CEO都是在公司奉獻多年的老將，在半導體行業扎根甚深。而今年58歲的斯萬卻是半路出家，此前他曾在許多知名企業干過財務工作，2016年才加入英特爾擔任首席財務官。

英特爾于1月底表示，斯萬目前暫時無法接受采訪。

伯恩斯坦研究公司的分析師斯泰西·拉斯貢指出：“這次物色CEO的過程是非常有挑戰的，但是斯萬很可能是最安全的選擇。”拉斯貢雖對英特爾選中斯萬感到意外，但他也稱贊斯萬是“一位有能力的經理人，會盡其所能推動公司的盈利。”

斯萬出生于紐約州北部的錫拉丘茲，1983年畢業于布法羅大學，獲得商學學位;他也是一名狂熱的橄欖球愛好者。1985年，他在紐約州立大學獲得MBA學位，畢業后加入了當地最富盛名的企業——通用電氣。在通用電氣的15年里，他在財務部門的職務一路上升，最后當上了通用電氣公司交通系統、醫療系統和照明系統的首席財務官。

2017年，斯萬在回本科的母校領獎的時候，回憶起當初在通用電氣的日子時，他引用了一個他最喜歡的比喻：“我在通用電氣早期時就認為，干財務不是‘數豆子’，而是要幫助豆子生長。”

1999年，一個叫做互聯網的新生事物讓斯萬感到十分興奮，因此他大膽走出了通用電氣的舒適區，當上了一家名叫Webvan的在線配送服務公司的首席運營官。2001年，也就是在這家公司破產前不久，他甚至短暫地擔任了這家公司的CEO。

Webvan破產后，斯萬又先后輾轉于幾家美國經典的知名企業。在2006年之前，他曾先后擔任汽車零部件與航天公司TRW和科技咨詢公司EDS的首席財務官。

后來，eBay的時任CEO梅格·惠特曼聘請斯旺擔任了eBay的首席財務官。過了幾年，惠特曼辭職競選公職，斯萬則繼續留在eBay輔佐下一任CEO約翰·多納霍。通過一系列收購，eBay迎來了一段強勢增長期。

斯萬的團隊收購了十幾家公司，包括以超10億美元收購Bill Me Later，和以24億美元收購GSI Commerce。其中最有遠見的一筆交易是在2013年以8億美元收購支付領域的創業公司Braintree，它開發了時下非常在美國非常流行的Venmo軟件，后來也成為了PayPal的一部分。從2006年也就是斯萬加盟eBay的那一年，到2014年即斯萬離開eBay的前一年，eBay的營收入增長三倍以上，達到近180億美元。

由于“華爾街狼王”卡爾·伊坎力推eBay重組，eBay的高管團隊最終停止了擴張計劃。對于伊坎提出的分拆PayPal的動議，多納霍和斯萬在堅持了一陣子之后，最終還是屈服了，將PayPal這個公司增長最快的部門拆分成了一家獨立的公司。

在2015年eBay分拆前后，多納霍、斯萬和高管團隊的多數成員都離開了。

從eBay離職后，斯萬的下一個東家是私募股權投資機構泛大西洋投資公司（General Atlantic），這家公司也是Uber、Airbnb等多家知名創業公司的幕后金主。在這里，他和通用電氣公司的前首席信息官加里·雷納重逢了。在上世紀90年代，這兩人通過業務外包，給通用電氣節約了大量成本。在泛大西洋投資公司，他們的主要工作是為所投資的企業提供金融和收并購等領域的咨詢。

這份工作使斯萬再次積累了與中小型創業公司合作的經歷。在幫助軟件開發公司AppDynamics成功融資1.58億美元后，他成為了這家公司的董事會成員。在斯萬從泛大西洋投資離職后，AppDynamics已經做好了掛牌上市的準備，而思科公司更是拋出40億美元的合同，希望能收購這家公司。

2016年，時任英特爾CEO的科再奇邀請斯萬擔任公司CFO，因為時任CFO的史黛西·史密斯正想轉到運營崗位上。斯萬的年薪大約是2300萬美元，在業內算是很高水平了，但是比英特爾為了吸引高通的聯合總裁文卡塔·倫杜琴塔拉而給出的報價還是低了200萬美元。

雖然斯萬將英特爾的財務管理得井井有條，但科再奇對公司生產業務的管理卻很不順暢。英特爾想升級其生產線，以生產更加小型化和高效的微處理器，然而先進產品的生產卻被推遲了好幾年，直到現在也無法實現大批量生產。最近幾年，英特爾在服務器芯片領域的強勢地位遭到了挑戰，同時它在移動芯片領域卻還沒有形成氣候。

現在該輪到斯萬去解決英特爾的問題了。而眼下，AMD和英偉達等競爭對手早已迎頭趕上。這些公司主要依賴臺積電等外部廠商進行生產，其發展速度已經超過了遲遲不能解決生產問題的英特爾。

過去三年是芯片行業的繁榮期，英特爾的股價也上漲了65%。然而在同一時間段內，英偉達的股價上漲了400%，AMD的股價更是比三年前上漲了10倍。相比之下，英特爾貌似還不錯的漲幅就顯得相形見絀了。

在1月下旬發給全體員工的一封電子郵件中，斯萬也拐彎抹角地提到了這些問題，但他并未直接表示他將怎樣解決這些問題。他在郵件中說：“我們的執行力必須要提高，也一定會提高。我們的客戶都在指望我們。”（財富中文網）

譯者：樸成奎

Intel spent seven months searching for a new chief executive only to end the process right where it had started. The chipmaking giant said on the end of January that its next CEO—only the seventh in the company’s 50-year history—would be Bob Swan, who had been leading Intel on an interim basis after the sudden departure of his predecessor, Brian Krzanich, in June.

The decision by Intel’s board marks a change from the previous six bosses, all of whom had long careers at the company and deep roots with its semiconductor business. Swan, 58, is an outsider who only joined in 2016 as chief financial officer after a lengthy career in finance at many well-known companies.

Intel said on the end of January that Swan was unavailable for an interview.

The hire was “likely the safest choice in what has apparently been a challenging search,” Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon noted. While hardly blown away by the hire, Rasgon complimented Swan as “a capable executive who does his best to drive the bottom line.”

A child of upstate New York, Swan was born in Syracuse and graduated from the University at Buffalo in 1983 with a business degree; he was also an avid rugby player there. He added an MBA from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1985 and then joined one of that region’s corporate gems at that time, General Electric. During his 15-year tenure, he quickly rose through the company’s finance ranks to serve as chief financial officer for GE Transportation Systems, GE Medical Systems, and GE Lighting.

“The expectation drilled into me early in my career at GE was that the role of finance is not about counting the beans — it’s about helping the beans grow,” Swan explained years later, citing one of his favorite metaphors while receiving an award at his undergraduate alma mater in 2017.

In 1999, excitement over a new thing called the Internet drew Swan out of the comfortable confines of GE to become chief operating officer at ill-fated online grocery delivery service Webvan. He even briefly took over as CEO in 2001, shortly before the entire company went under.

Then it was back to some of the classic names in corporate America, serving as CFO at the auto parts and aerospace company TRW and at tech consulting giant EDS until 2006.

That’s when eBay’s then-CEO Meg Whitman hired Swan as her CFO. A few years later, she resigned to run for political office and Swan spent most of his tenure helping the next CEO, John Donahoe, through an intense period of growth fueled by acquisitions.

The team bought dozens of companies, including Bill Me Later for over $1 billion and GSI Commerce for $2.4 billion. The most far-sighted may have been spending $800 million in 2013 for payments startup Braintree, which developed the now-popular Venmo app and later became part of PayPal. From 2006, the year Swan joined, through 2014, the year before he left, eBay’s revenue more than tripled to nearly $18 billion.

Ultimately, eBay’s executive team ended their expansion plans after billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn started agitating for a reorganization. After initially resisting, Donahoe and Swan gave in to Icahn’s demands to split the company’s faster-growing payments unit, PayPal, into a separate company.

The two leaders and much of their executive team left around the time of the 2015 spin off.

Swan’s next move took him to General Atlantic, a private equity and investing firm known for backing major startups like Uber and Airbnb. There, he reunited with former GE chief information officer Gary Reiner, with whom he had reaped tremendous cost savings at GE in the 1990s through outsourcing. At General Atlantic, they advised companies the firm invested in on similar matters including finance, mergers and acquisitions, and use of technology.

The stint also gave Swan an opportunity to work with smaller startups again. He served on the board of software developer AppDynamics after helping lead a $158 million financing for the company. A year after Swan had departed, AppDynamics was readying an initial public offering when Cisco Systems swooped in with a $4 billion buyout offer.

Former Intel CEO Krzanich wooed Swan back to a CFO role in 2016 when then-CFO Stacy Smith wanted to move into an operational role. Swan’s compensation package was valued at $23 million, lofty by CFO standards but $2 million less than Krzanich spent the year before luring Qualcomm co-president Venkata “Murthy” Renduchintala to Intel.

While Swan kept the chipmaker’s finances in order, Krzanich struggled to keep its manufacturing operation running smoothly. Intel was trying to upgrade to making smaller, more efficient microprocessors, but delays pushed off the more advanced products for years—they’re still unavailable in large volumes. And Intel still isn’t much of a player in mobile chip, while its strong position in server chips is under attack.

Now it will fall to Swan to fix Intel’s problems, even as rivals Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia march ahead. They rely on outside manufacturers like Taiwan Semiconductor that have outpaced Intel and its manufacturing woes.

During a boom time for chipmakers over the past three years, Intel’s shares have risen 65%. But that seemingly healthy amount is anemic compared to Nvidia’s 400% rise and AMD’s shares rising 10 times their price from three years ago.

In an email to all staff on late January, Swan alluded to the problems without directly addressing what he’d do to correct them. “Our execution must improve,” he wrote. “And it will. Our customers are counting on us.”