Carly Fiorina Resigns As Chief Of HP

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/09/technology/hp_fiorina/index.htm?cnn=yes' target='_blank'>http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/09/technology/hp_fiorina/index.htm?cnn=yes</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Hewlett Packard Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina, one of the most powerful women in corporate America, is leaving the company effective immediately, after being forced out by its board. Fiorina was the only female CEO of a component of the Dow Jones industrial average. But her controversial May 2002 purchase of Compaq after a bruising proxy fight led by one of the Hewlett heirs has not produced the shareholder returns or profits she had promised."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/carly_fiorina.03.jpg" /><br /><br />This is slightly off topic; however, HP is one of the major players in the Digital Media world so the news <i>is</i> important. From a personal standpoint, when the merger was announced several years ago, I have to admit that I was happy to hear of it. It made a fair bit of sense as HP wanted to become a much large player in the desktop/server market. Ahh, but how wrong I was.<br /><!><br />The vicious battle between her and the Hewlett heirs led to Carly's victory and the merger proceeded; however, we have all seen how badly it has failed. It appears that HP has become more of a behemoth company with tons of bureaucracy and so many small and uncoordinated departments that don't really talk to one another. Case in point: I bought a 1GB module for a tablet PC from HPshopping and when it didn't fit in the system, I called HP. After being bounced through several departments and explaining the problem everytime to every engineer, I was told to send in the tablet for a hardware upgrade (for free since my tablet is still under warranty). A couple of days later, I get a call saying that there is no such thing as a hardware upgrade, certainly not for free, and that I was was change the memory. HPshopping in the mean time will not accept HP's advice, nor will they take back the memory since it is beyond the take-back-date. This case still remains unresolved after three months as they don't quite know what to do.<br /><br />HP had a solid market share in the printer scanner business, but has since really lost its focus. It has alienated its customers (remember how none of their "older" pocketPCs qualified for ROM upgrades) and is generally languishing in all the problems that plague a poorly managed large company - tons of bureaucracy where where exist tons of redundant small departments, none of whom talk to each other. Janak (from pocketpcthoughts.com) and I often joke that HP, the behemoth of a company, will be gone by the end of the decade, despite the occasional good new products that it creates. I can see why the Board was unhappy with the results of the merger and the results from the CEO and the decision to force her out, I think, is a good one. I wonder what's next for HP.

[jmulder]

I remember when this merger was in negotiation, Carly kept defending the merger as the best thing for the company and its shareholders. My in-laws have lost most of their retirement due to HP's stock drop (both retired from HP), and Carly pocketed $16 million cash for brokering the deal. If the merger was so great for shareholders, why didn't Carly take stock options instead?

[Janak Parekh]

By the way, Suhit is being very calm in that post, and didn't detail the phone transfer hell he goes through every time he calls them. You had to see how angry he was at HP. Calling HP is now like calling the federal government -- a bunch of bureaucracies that don't know what the others are doing. Given his experience (he was ready to throw things yesterday), I don't know if I'll ever buy a HP product again (well, except maybe for printers).

We disagreed when the merger went through, and I was totally right about it. :P (I also had experience with Compaq products, and when I saw the ad-hoc nature of the merger it looked like total disorganization -- which it indeed seems to be.)

--janak

[Jerry Raia]

It says she'll get A $21 million payout. I wish I could get that much for screwing up at my job. :lol:

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

That's some golden handshake.

Suhit, sorry to hear about your problems. That is really really terrible service you're getting. I'd escalate the problem if I were you.

[Gary Sheynkman]

so how long before femenist groups sue HP?

[Phoenix]

Resigned, they say? Hardly. Her butt was canned (otherwise known as "forced to resign"). With CEOs, they always "resign" due to a "difference in vision", or "moving on to other interests", or so on and so on. It humors me to hear companies use those terms for CEOs out of respect, and certainly, some do indeed leave for those reasons. But often times, and obviously if they aren't performing, "resigning" is just slang for "got axed".

Among many others, I also never thought she was the best candidate for that position. She was in way over her head. Time has proved that correct.

And I can never understand why people who run companies, fail, and then get rewarded millions upon millions of dollars for having made poor decisions. That will never make any sense to me. They get rewarded for poor performance, thanks to contracts. The same thing happened with the woman CEO who ran Toys 'R' Us - was canned and got millions.

Can't say I'm sad Carly is gone (because I'm not), but now she'll have all sorts of free time to take a nice vacation with her wealth.

Anybody would be so lucky to be rich and able to do whatever they wanted from lackluster performance.

What a world we live in.

[jlp]

Both Carly Fiorina and Condoleezza Rice were born in 1954, the Chinese year of the Horse. Two Roosters if you ask me... :twisted:

Which reminds me of Prince Charles first wedding, in 1981, the Chinese year of the Rooster; we all know how that ended.

And guess what?! He's doing that again this year, another Rooster year!! :splat: