Lenovo Raids Dell For Another Executive - Its Fourth Hire In A Week

Lenovo

has raided the management ranks of archrival

Dell

for an executive.

The latest hire, announced Thursday morning, is Christopher Askew, who was vice president of Dell Services for Asia-Pacific and Japan. Askew had worked for Dell since 1999 and oversaw Dell's services business for the 38 countries covering the Asia-Pacific and Japan markets, according to Lenovo.

William Amelio, Lenovo's chief executive officer, ran Asian operations for Dell before joining Lenovo last winter.

Askew will lead the services business unit - a new creation - for Lenovo.

"Customer satisfaction is a key goal for Lenovo, and this new Lenovo Services unit deepens our commitment to delighting customers with every services engagement," Amelio said.

"Services are increasingly important to all PC customers, and we intend to take our responsiveness and performance to industry-leading levels," he added. "While Lenovo already approaches best-of-breed in this respect, services leadership requires a strong, unified global organization to drive both the highest customer satisfaction and operational excellence."

On Monday, Lenovo named David Schmoock of Dell to run a new "Center of Excellence" unit. He was Dell's vice president for marketing in Dell's Asia Pacific/Japan region.

A week ago, Lenovo hired Dell executives David Miller and Sotaro Amano. Miller will lead Lenovo's Asia Pacific operations, and Amano will oversea Lenovo operations in Japan.

Earlier this week, Dell Chairman Michael Dell told The New York Times that the company was retaining executives it wanted to keep.

"I'm not going to tell you we want people to leave," Dell told The Times. "But by and large, we've been pretty successful in retaining the people we want to retain."

Lenovo is the world's third-largest PC manufacturer behind Dell and HP. Lenovo is locked in furious competition with Dell in the Asian market, especially in China.

Lenovo is building its new global headquarters in Morrisville. Dell, which is based in Texas, operates its largest manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, N.C.