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Monday, June 14, 2010

Are Californians stupid enough to buy this used CEO?
Posted by Jill | 7:37 PM
It's hard to believe that there are actually people in California who don't care that Carly Fiorina is one of the worst CEOs in history. But don't take my word for it:

Here’s a fact for you, Portfolio magazine named Fiorina the “19th Worst CEO of All-Time”—placing her in the top 20 along with the likes of Dick Fuld, Ken Lay, Roger Smith and Bernie Ebbers.  Why? Because her tenure as CEO of Hewlett Packard was a disaster.

The magazine described Fiorina as “a consummate self-promoter” who “paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005.”

While promoting herself as a job creator, the reality is Fiorina proved much more adept as a jobs killer.  In fact, she referred to offshoring as “right-shoring”, and fired at least 18,000 people.  Fiorina told Fortune she “should have done them all faster."

Her so-called business acumen—the very one a chorus of pundits are praising along with Fiorina—was there for all the world to see in the $24 billion HP-Compaq merger that she pushed through in 2002. According to the International Herald Tribune, Fiorina used “hardball tactics to suppress the opposition” to the merger by the company’s founding families.

The Washington Post reported that Fiorina also understated the company’s own projections of the number of jobs at risk in the merger, and overstated the expected profits, according to Walter Hewlett, the company’s largest shareholder at the time and son of its co-founder.  Fortune reported that in hindsight, Fiorina wished she had been “more transparent,” but that “candor…would have also further damaged the company…and probably the stock price.”

So how did the Fiorina-fueled merger pan out?

“A flop” and “disastrous,” according to the London Observer.

“A big bet that didn’t pay off,” wrote Fortune.  “Didn’t even come close to attaining what Fiorina and HP’s board said was in store.”

Less than three years later Fiorina was fired.  The Associated Press reported that the company’s stock “has gone nowhere for two years,” and “rose almost 7 percent after earlier soaring almost 11 percent on the news of her ouster.”

Massive layoffs, jobs shipped overseas, and failed merger aside, Fiorina certainly did get one thing right: her severance package, reportedly worth $42 million.


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1 Comments:
Blogger Bob said...
Meanwhile, religious patriarchalist Ross Douthat is praising the triumph of conservative feminists in NYT. But I think guys like him are goddess starved, & Blessed Virgin Mary doesn't quite compensate.
6/15/10, 3:37 PM  
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