HP Says Many Good Candidates Are Willing to Follow Hurd

Hewlett-Packard’s search for a CEO to replace Mark Hurd is going better than expected. That’s the word from interim CEO Cathie Lesjak, who says the company’s executive search committee is knee-deep in a good pool of applicants. “We’ve been very pleased with the selection of candidates,” she said at the 2010 Citi Technology Conference today. “There was some worry that there wouldn’t be that many. That certainly hasn’t been the issue.”

A well-timed bit of reassurance for addled HP (HPQ) investors who can’t be feeling too good about Hurd’s new gig with HP partner and rival Oracle (ORCL).

Asked about the state of HP’s relationship with Oracle, Lesjak conceded that it was “strained,” but said she expects the two companies to patch things up sooner of later. “At the end of the day business will prevail,” she said. “Ultimately we’ll go back to being good partners.”

Hard to imagine, given the words the two companies have exchanged recently and their developing rivalry in the servers and storage systems market. We’ll see, I suppose.