Breaking - Hewlett-Packard Chmn & CEO Resigns

MSNBC ^ | 02/09/2005 | Self

[drt1]

Reporting now - Will provide link to story when it is posted.

[drt1]

Good, bad? Don't know.

[geege]

Well she can certainly afford it.

[drt1]

Fiorina was highest woman CEO. Details are sketchy but performance of Company under her stewardship was apparently the issue.

[billorites]

Carly Fiorina

[Williams]

Is this the genius woman who merged them with Compaq? Maybe now they'll hire some tech support stateside that can speak English.

[Drango]

sell short!

[rabidralph]

True equality: the ability to fail just as spectacularly as any man.

[cynicom]

This woman supposedly was the most brilliant thing on wheels and was going to make HP a powerhouse etc etc.

[drt1]

sell short!

Don;t think so. The stock is up almost 10% in pre-market trading.

[drt1]

Link to story

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6939785/

[PGalt]

Very interesting. Thanks for the info.

[Drango]

sell long.

[LiberationIT]

One more celebrity CEO bites the dust.

Never trust a CEO who seeks the limelight. They start to believe their own press.

This should help HP (assuming the Board has learned a lesson.)

[Publius6961]

True equality: the ability to fail just as spectacularly as any man.

All I know is that HP printers went from bulletproof in the early 90s to haphazard quality in the early 00s...

Quality control? Outsourcing? I have no idea.
But I do know this. Their own employees describe their current incarnation of printers as "crap". With my own ears.

[BibChr]

"Good, bad? Don't know."

If it's Carly Fiorina, definitely good.

Dan

[chimera]

Definitely good. Carly is a walking disaster area. She was involved in the Lucent debacle. H-P used to be a tech innovator's paradise. Capable people were valued and rewarded for their efforts. In recent years, they have been "downsized" and their jobs sent to Indonesia. But she did post an opening for stewardess on her private jet. Guess all those displaced Ph.D. EEs can apply for that.

The real question is, will H-P be able to bounce back? It's like recovering from a bout of botulism. Possible, but it drains your strength and you need a strong constitution and will to live.

[BibChr]

I was working at HP in IT until about a half-year ago. The morale of the long-timers -- who remembered golden days under Hewlett -- was really, really sad. Our jobs were sent to Canada and India. She'd get on the PA system and blame everyone for not working hard enough. Just sad.

God was very good to me in helping me find a terrific place to work before our whole department was shipped abroad, but I felt really sorry for the employees left behind with that support. When I'd contact someone on an issue, he or she'd often say, "Thank God! Someone who speaks English!"

Dan

[mountaineer]

Bloomberg reports:

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina will step down after differences with the board on company strategy.

The decision is effective immediately. Chief Financial Officer Robert Wayman will be interim CEO, Hewlett-Packard said in a statement today. Patricia Dunn will be chairwoman.

Fiorina has struggled to boost personal-computer profits, make money on storage devices and report consistent gains in sales of servers. Under Fiorina's watch, Hewlett-Packard lost the lead in the PC market to Dell Inc. She engineered the purchase of Compaq Computer Corp. to broaden Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard's reach in 2002, and some investors still say the buyout was a mistake.

``The Compaq merger was a fiasco right from the start,'' said analyst Jason Maxwell at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc., which manages $100 billion and owns Hewlett-Packard shares. ``The premise was that they were going to gain some kind of scale that would allow them to get a better cost structure and gain market share, and that is just not true.''

Hewlett-Packard shares rose $2.37 to $22.51 at 8:11 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=alCm2CjKiMGw&refer=home

[nuconvert]

Ask Neil

[Hegemony Cricket]

I agree with your comment about HP printers. In my experience with them, HP has apparently tried to lower costs (like virtually all other manufacturers) by making the inidvidual components smaller & lighter. An early 90's weighs probably double what a current deskjet weighs. Unfortunately this translates into a far less robust product.

[ken21]

oh...boy!

been watching that for years.

yep, the family scion was right. he took out ads in the large newspapers warning stockholders.

the takeover of compaq was not justified.

[smiley]

geezzz...she was on Fox's Neil/Neal Cavoto's show a while back..stating she LOVED her job....what gives????

[drt1]

Beware the Celeb CEO. It usually peaks just before they show them the door. This was a mess from way back - The imbroglio over the Compaq acquisition and the obvious quality problems with their core product lines - Printers.

[rabidralph]

I haven't bought anything by HP since '97. I still have my 820Cs inkjet, which I got in '96, and it works just fine. I just didn't have a good feeling about them since the Compaq merger and then I "discovered" Dell.

[chimera]

I know it. My brother-in-law's brother was one of the ones Carly fixed up by sending his R&D job to Malaysia. As bright as they come, Ph.D. in EE, years and years of experience, patents, publications, the works. Did everything that was asked of him and more. That didn't impress Carly as much as trying to "cut costs" and getting that $10 million bonus from the BoD as a result.

Last I heard he was considering going into training (in his late forties) to be an insurance salesman, and maybe fixing electronic musical instruments on the side to earn a few extra dollars. So much for education and experience. But, hey, that doesn't matter, and shouldn't stand in the way of a few more pennies of profit for good old Carly.

[Sender]

I am still using an old HP LaserJet IIIP at home. It's slower but it's made of steel and ball bearings, not just a piece of plastic with a chip on it.

[jamaksin]

And, lest we forget ... the earlier COMPAQ "merger" with digital never yielded fruit. But that is another story ...

[drt1]

The track record on all of these so-called strategic mergers is mixed at best. Compaq was identified early on as problematic by many but they were steamrolled by Fiorina and look where it got them. IMO another example of Brain Dead Boards.

[killjoy]

This should have happened years ago.

[sd-joe]

>> "IMO another example of Brain Dead Boards." <<

Brain Dead Boards hire Brain Dead Broads.

[KarlInOhio]

From late last month:

http://computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/story/0,10801,99222,00.html?from=homeheads

JANUARY 24, 2005 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Hewlett-Packard Co.'s board of directors is considering a plan that would redistribute some of the day-to-day responsibilities of the company's chairman and CEO, Carly Fiorina, to other HP executives, due in part to the board's displeasure with the company's uneven performance, according to a report published today.

Rather than seeking to undermine Fiorina, the board believes that by giving three senior executives more authority, it would enable HP to respond more quickly to customer demands and the increased competition it faces from industry players such as Dell Inc., according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The Journal article doesn't name any sources, only citing "people familiar with the situation."

She wasn't happy about being eased out.

[curmudgeonII]

Should have happened years ago.

[Fred Hayek]

First Lucent, then Hewlett Packard. Which corporation will Carly wreck next?

[Ragnorak]

The MSNBC article focuses on the fact that she is a woman. She was running the company for over 5 years and the only "accomplishment" they can cite occurred 9 months before she was born?

For the record, I actually like Carly. I watched a number of talks she's given and she has an impressive grasp of the telecommunications industry. But consultants get paid to know their industry and CEO's get paid to not merge with Compaq.

[RayChuang88]

I think the biggest problem with HP is the fact their printer division is suffering from too much competition from Canon and Epson and HP needs to shore up that division to be really profitable again.

[KC_for_Freedom]

HP stock jumps 10% at this event? (At the current time)

[longtermmemmory]

Perhaps we can loan her out to help Dean at the DNC?

[Fred Hayek]

Last year I made the business decision of "No more HP". That goes for both computers and printers. Quality and tech support has gone downhill. At least for computers, all new ones here are going to be Dells. As for printers, well, I'll see when the HP laser breaks. The Dell stuff is a bit more than the HP products, but with a business I need to take into account potential down time.

I had a reconditioned HP Laserjet 4P. Its replacement is a Laserjet 1012. It does have a smaller footprint, goes faster, and does have a relatively simple paper transport - doesn't jam much, and when it does, its easier to clear out than the older design. But the current design is basically a "throwaway". If it really breaks down, discard it and get a new one.

[drt1]

Don't know where she will go but Compaq's ex-CEO, Capellis (Sp?), landed at another paragon of Corporate success, MCI. The market for overpaid failures is large and, apparently, growing so look for her to surface soon and be on TV again.

[chris1]

The problem is that they rip everyone off on the printer cartriges.

[Fred Hayek]

The corporate culture under Fiorina was not too friendly towards males over 40. She brought over a lot of the politically correct culture from AT&T and Lucent.

[Fred Hayek]

What's this I hear about Dell looking at buying out HP?

[rabidralph]

Wow, no more HP for you. Anywhere I've worked, I've always used HP Laserjets and they've been great. It's sad that the brand has fallen off like that. I plan on getting a Xerox Phaser for my business when I get that rolling.

[Faeroe]

Many, many HP employees are ecstatic today.

[BibChr]

Well, she's a living example of the proverb, "Penny wise, and pound foolish."

Our contracting firm was hired (I gather) to make sense of their internal IT support. We did. Each month, we outperformed expectations, and were well-paid for it. The internal users were, as a rule, delighted.

But first Carly got the idea of laying off more and more of us. Then she got the idea of cutting our salaries by 33%.

Then she got the idea of sending ALL internal support to untrained, inexperienced, English-iffy-at-best folks in Canada and India.

And so now, instead of getting fixes immediately or soon after (and a smile on their face), their $60K/$70K+ a year employees are forced to sit on the phone, or wait days, for their fixes.

She's a warning to other American CEO's. I hope they hear it.

Dan

[Fred Hayek]

Competition from Canon -
I thought the original laser printer was a combination of HP's electronics and Canon's paper transport and toner technology from Canon's copiers.

[longtermmemmory]

I wonder if there has ever been a SERIOUS study on how PC affects productivity. Not a self praising PC study to affirm PC quotas.

I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that PC culture is bad for the bottom line.

[longtermmemmory]

How many people use the ink refil kits? They seem to go for 1/3 the cost of a new cartridge.

[drt1]

"What's this I hear about Dell looking at buying out HP?"

Haven't heard that one. Question, why? Dell is kicking but and doesn't need anything HP could bring to the table. That would be a big mistake IMO - Akin to HP's acquisition of Compaq in the Duh! Department.

[dfwgator]

The problem with refill kits are the cartridges actually have software built in to shut off after a certain amount of time, even though there is still plenty of ink left in them.