Cisco’s John Chambers Steps Down as the Chairman
After 24 years on the board of Cisco , chairman and former CEO John Chambers will officially leave the company when his board term expires in December, the company announced on Monday. Cisco’s current CEO Chuck Robbins will take over as chairman.
Robbins took over as CEO two years ago when Chambers retired from that role. Chambers was CEO from 1995 to 2015, having joined Cisco in 1991 as the head of sales. He led the company from $1.2 billion in annual revenue to nearly $50 billion before turning the reins over to Robbins.
Robbins has been busily revamping Cisco, shifting it toward cloud software and away from an eroding computer network equipment market, the market that Cisco still dominates. Because Robbins is already leading a new strategy and appointed many of his own people when he took over, investors are treating this news as a yawn. The stock is steady at just over $32 a share.
