Sorry, but there is no Lou Gerstner

I want to clear up a common misperception. There is no Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.

Many of you think he is chairman and CEO of IBM Corp., but I have concluded he is a Big Blue concoction -- a figment of our imaginations.

The supposed Mr. Gerstner has his own home page and has been credited with raising the value of IBM's equity by $40 billion. IBM has even created a rough-gruff no-nonsense persona around the mythical Mr. Gerstner, and published reports in BusinessWeek and Fortune magazines claim he spends most of his time with customers.

I'm not quite sure who was behind creating the Gerstner apparition, but it sure has people fooled. Maybe it was former IBM chief financial officers Jerome York and Richard Thoman, who arguably ran the company when they did their respective Big Blue tours of duty.

Now I've seen the Gerstnerian apparition. I met with him in January, 1994 at a hastily thrown-together office in IBM's Manhattan skyscraper on Madison Ave. It was all an elaborate act to make me think I had met with Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. IBM even put in his bio that this Gerstner chap had also been chairman and CEO of RJR Nabisco. I doubt if IBM would have a chairman with a resume that included selling smokes.

Anyway, Gerstner talked about cost-cutting, return to profitability, keeping IBM unified, the silliness of "the vision thing" and the rosy future of the mainframe. He even looked like his picture.

Just because it all worked out that way he said it would didn't fool me. Nosireebob!

IBM agents probably pulled some wage-earner down from mainframe manufacturing in Poughkeepsie and coached him for the meeting. I could see the blue paint on his hands -- he could be the guy who spray-paints the mainframe cabinets.

In the same meeting, we agreed to meet or talk twice a year to get his continuing "vision" for IBM. We have not seen hide nor hair of him since. Poof. Gone. Every time I call for an interview, his handlers say he's too busy. That's how I know he doesn't exist. If he did, he would meet with us. Lordy, I've interviewed Bill Gates 10 times since I last saw the elusive Lou.

I confess that at one time I believed Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. was real. My guess is that the guy painting the mainframe cabinets in the Poughkeepsie sprayroom is just too vital to spare for press interviews. At this point, I'd settle for another Gerstner look and sound-alike.