When it comes to corporate leadership and stewardship, there is no better example in recent memory than Hewlett-Packard’s (NYSE: HPQ) CEO, Mark Hurd. After presiding by a very public corporate spying scandal in 2006, the former NCR lifer has brought HP back from the confused, muddling days of Carly Fiorina and into the tech and commerce highlight.

HP has had a tremendous year in 2007 from a sales and profit perspective, which — for a hardware company — is no small feat. But plus, Hurd has engineered larger sales from HP’s software side with the Mercury Interactive acquisition, and has made the HP consumer PC commerce energized again with fresh designs, more retail exposure, and a solid marketing effort. In a manner of speaking, HP has thumped competitor Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) that year, as the latter has struggled with profitability, an accounting scandal, market share losses, and out-of-control costs. The exact opposite has happened to HP under Hurd’s hand.

In surpassing IBM (NYSE: IBM)as the world’s largest tech company that year (by sales), HP seems to be

firing on all cylinders. Having covered many quarterly conference calls that year, there is not a separate CEO I can think of that articulates company vision, strategy, sales prowess, and operational efficiency better than Hurd. All those variables and more are what makes a company successful, and a leader successful at main the charge on all fronts.

For his efforts at turning around HP into the huge success it currently enjoys, Hurd is listed by Forbes as having been compensated to the tune of $15.14 million (2006 figures), which ranks him #91 on the overall list regarding total amount paid annually. Is he worth it? In terms of a CEO bargain, yes. Many (many) other CEOs have made way more than that for middling or disastrous performance. Hurd is definitely not one of them, and from that writer’s perspective, he’s earned every penny.

Be certain to check out more Money Winners of 2007.

Original post by Brian White

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