Despite a US$93 million profit in domestic sales, Yang said overall results were hit by the losses in overseas sales and admitted that Lenovo was a "weak competitor" in the US and Europe.

Disappointing results notwithstanding, the day after the announcement of Liu's return, Lenovo shares jumped 10.96 percent to HK$1.62 apiece, breaking the long slide which saw the shares losing more than 72 percent in the past year.

"Although it (the change) is almost within our expectations, the news was still so inspiring that many Lenovo staffers said in private that 'Liu brings hope to Lenovo'," the company source said.

Indeed, Legend's board of directors had been toying with the idea of reinstating Liu to the top slot for quite some time. In August 2008, Liu was heard mentioning that Lenovo was his destiny and it was his "duty" to rejoin Lenovo's management team to help the company regain its competitive edge, the source said.

At the age of 40, Liu left his cushy government job to establish New Technology Developer, the predecessor of Lenovo, with an investment of 200,000 yuan together with 10 employees from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the ensuring years, the company has firmly established itself as the largest vendor of computer equipment in China, comfortably holding a 30 percent share of the domestic market.

Liu was known to have always harbored a burning desire to shape Lenovo into a major world player. He laid the foundation for global expansion by acquiring the personal computer business of IBM in December 2004 for US$1.75 billion, together with the right to use the "Thinkpad" brand name for five years.

Although the price Lenovo paid was seen in overseas markets to be on the high side, the move was widely applauded in China as "brilliant" or "forward looking". It was hailed by some commentators as a statement of China's resurgence as a global economic power.

(China Daily February 25, 2009)