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NCR's Nuti says: ‘I want to be a winner’

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Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, (left), and NCR CEO and Chairman Bill Nuti shake hands at the Capitol in Atlanta on Tuesday, June 2, after announcing that NCR will move its headquarters to suburban Atlanta and open a manufacturing operations in Columbus, Ga.

Associated Press photo by John Bazemore Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, (left), and NCR CEO and Chairman Bill Nuti shake hands at the Capitol in Atlanta on Tuesday, June 2, after announcing that NCR will move its headquarters to suburban Atlanta and open a manufacturing operations in Columbus, Ga.

By Dan Chapman, Cox News Service Updated 12:10 PM Monday, June 8, 2009

Bill Nuti, the chairman and CEO of NCR, grew up in a rough neighborhood in New York. He has translated that toughness into the business world, angering Daytonians last week when he announced that NCR would be moving to Atlanta.

Nuti’s chutzpah has proven effective during his still-young corporate career. A master salesman, he soared at IBM and Cisco Systems, right-sized a floundering Symbol Technologies and, he hopes, positioned NCR for the post-recession 21st century.

“Look, I grew up in a tough area, so I don’t scare easily,” said Nuti, 45. “You knock me down, I’ll get back up. That motivates me. I want to be a winner.”

Nuti said the move to Atlanta will one day boost profits. It’s much easier, for example, to fly to clients in Moscow or Mumbai from Atlanta than Dayton. Nuti also proclaimed the Metro Atlanta talent pool superior to Ohio’s. More than $96 million in tax breaks and other incentives didn’t hurt.

“Mr. Nuti absolutely behaved shamefully and irresponsibly,” Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher said. Atlanta “needs to be concerned about the lack of loyalty and communication that NCR executives showed Ohio, because they may do the same to you in future years.”

Nuti seems unfazed. He also deflects concern that, while the company headquarters and 1,250 jobs head to Atlanta, Nuti and dozens of top executives will remain in New York.

Nuti said he was IBM’s top copier salesman during his junior year of college. He worked for IBM for eight years.

Two-year sales stints at smallish computer companies followed. Nuti was riding the IT wave when “this little company doing $60 million a year in revenue” came after him.

Cisco Systems, today a $40 billion industry giant, hired Nuti to sell routers to financial firms on Wall Street. He was the company’s top salesman in 1993 and 1994 and was named a regional manager.

Cisco CEO John Chambers promoted Nuti to head Asian operations. When Cisco was about to lose a billion-dollar contract to a Chinese rival, Nuti and Chambers personally lobbied President Jiang Zemin. They prevailed.

“Nuti and Chambers stole victory from the jaws of defeat,” said Tom Galvin, a Cisco spokesman at the time. “Nuti got things done. That was the bottom line.”

That earned Nuti the top Cisco spot in Europe.

He returned to New York in 2001 to a post he hoped would be a springboard into Cisco’s top spot. Chambers, though, wasn’t ready to step aside. Nuti was restless.

He was hired by Symbol Technologies, a maker of bar-code scanners on Long Island. Symbol, though, offered a be-careful-what-you-wish-for paradigm.

It was under investigation by the feds for overstating revenue. Nuti said he would’ve stayed at Cisco if he’d known the extent of Symbol’s troubles.

Nuti fired the top 16 executives and two-thirds of management. He overhauled Symbol’s sales, service and manufacturing operations.

By 2003, Symbol was again profitable. At Cisco, Nuti had been hailed as a “wunderkind” by Forbes. At Symbol, he earned a reputation as a turnaround artist.

NCR, the world leader in ATMs, check-out scanners and check-in kiosks at airports, took note. The former National Cash Register hired Nuti in spring 2005.

Two years later, NCR spun off Teradata, a data warehousing division, which helped NCR mark its most profitable year in a decade. Self-service wireless technology is NCR’s future. Computer chip-embedded cell phones will be able to get cash from ATMs or make hotel reservations at the airport.

NCR, which employs 22,400 people worldwide, had revenues of $5.3 billion last year, up from $5 billion the previous year. Net profit dipped to $228 million, from $274 million. Standard & Poor’s gives NCR “a satisfactory business profile” and expects new products and overseas expansion to keep revenues steady, if not spectacular.

NCR ultimately could have more than 3,000 employees in Georgia. But Nuti and about 150 executives will remain in New York, where NCR leases the 35th floor at 7 World Trade Center.

Nuti was contractually obliged to move to Dayton when he became CEO. He never did. A year later, the board said he could keep living on Long Island.

Nuti said “family health reasons” keep him in New York. “And some of our largest customers in the world are in New York,” he added. “It’s very important for us to have a presence around them.”

Nuti plans to spend a few days each week in Atlanta and to be “very involved in the community.”

Nuti and wife Michele, though, enjoy New York. In 2005, they were “gold sponsors” for a Lincoln Center gala featuring Julia Roberts  and Paul Newman. A year later, they held a $300-$1,000 backyard fundraiser for presidential candidate Hilary Clinton, at which Bon Jovi performed.

The Nutis donated $6,900 each to Clinton’s bid. Bill Nuti also gave John McCain $2,300, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The man behind NCR's move

Bill Nuti grew up in the Edenwald section of the Bronx, a neighborhood in the 1970s turning meaner by the day. Nuti’s parents wanted him out before he ended up dead.

Fortunately, Nuti’s 76-year-old grandmother remarried a “wealthy man who took a liking to me and wanted to polish me up,” said Nuti, CEO of NCR Corp.

At age 14, Nuti left the family’s one-bedroom “tenement” in the Bronx for his grandmother’s home in Huntington, Long Island. But the son of a truck driver never lost his inner-city toughness.

Nuti’s tenacity propelled him up the corporate ladder. As CEO of one company, he fired the top 16 executives. As CEO of NCR, he dismissed 125 years of tradition by moving the headquarters last week from Dayton to Atlanta.

“This is one of the bigger decisions I’ll make during my career at this company,” he said.

William  Robert Nuti

Title: Chairman and CEO, NCR. Corp.
Age: 45
Education: Graduated from Long Island University, C.W. Post campus, in 1986, with a bachelor’s degree in finance.
Career: IBM, 1981-1988; Netrix, 1988-1990; Network Equipment Technologies, 1990-1992; Cisco Systems, 1992-2002; Symbol Technologies, 2002-2005; NCR, 2005-today.
Family: Wife, Michele, and son, L.B. (“Little Bill”).
Residence: Nissequogue, Long Island, New York.

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