OT: Carly gets canned

[chrisv]

http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA502627?nid=2019

[Yousuf Khan]

chrisv wrote: http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA502627?nid=2019

Wonder what took them so long?

Yousuf Khan

[daytripper]

On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 19:59:24 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:
chrisv wrote: http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA502627?nid=2019Wonder what took them so long? Yousuf Khan


One theory: the board members were too busy being human trial subjects for
these: http://www.neuticles.com/index1.html

[Yousuf Khan]

daytripper wrote: On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 19:59:24 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:chrisv wrote:http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA502627?nid=2019Wonder what took them so long? Yousuf Khan One theory: the board members were too busy being human trial subjects for these: http://www.neuticles.com/index1.html

You think that maybe HP might get back to the business of making
products rather than making mergers?

Yousuf Khan

[daytripper]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 19:29:37 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:
daytripper wrote: On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 19:59:24 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:chrisv wrote:>http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA502627?nid=2019>Wonder what took them so long? Yousuf Khan One theory: the board members were too busy being human trial subjects for these: http://www.neuticles.com/index1.htmlYou think that maybe HP might get back to the business of makingproducts rather than making mergers? Yousuf Khan

Products based on what? Itanic?

<snigger>

Other than the Sacred Printer Business - which I expect will be spun out of
harms way - HP's future is the standard "death from a thousand cuts"...

/daytripper

[keith]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 18:01:55 -0500, daytripper wrote:
On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 19:59:24 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:chrisv wrote: http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA502627?nid=2019Wonder what took them so long? Yousuf Khan One theory: the board members were too busy being human trial subjects for these: http://www.neuticles.com/index1.html

Ah, so they've been eating "canned" dog food too?

Kinda exonerates David Packard, eh?

--
Keith

[keith]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 21:18:09 -0500, daytripper wrote:
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 19:29:37 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:daytripper wrote: On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 19:59:24 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@ezrs.com> wrote:>chrisv wrote:>>>http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA502627?nid=2019>>>>Wonder what took them so long?>> Yousuf Khan One theory: the board members were too busy being human trial subjects for these: http://www.neuticles.com/index1.htmlYou think that maybe HP might get back to the business of makingproducts rather than making mergers? Yousuf Khan Products based on what? Itanic? <snigger> Other than the Sacred Printer Business - which I expect will be spun out of harms way - HP's future is the standard "death from a thousand cuts"...

Unfortunate as that is. HP was once one of the greats. I thought
spinning off Aligent was a mistake, but I was *way* wrong. It's doing
just fine well away from ground-zero.

--
Keith

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article <e00l01df6tjc1vdm4lenoqnnnj4l82mjsf@4ax.com>, chrisv
<chrisv@nospam.invalid> writes

Interesting article in today's Times (UK), well worth a read. The dead-
trees version of the paper had a box-out headed "HP-Compaq merger was
the best thing that could have happened to us - Dell".

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ and enter 'fiorina' in the search box.
This is a quote of the first few paragraphs. The site has one of those
annoying pop-up search features that prevents linking directly to
article URLs.

"The classic boardroom ambush that ended Queen Carly's reign
By Chris Ayres
The rise and fall of the woman accused of leading a Silicon Valley giant
into catastrophe

HERE’S a little-known fact about the computer business: if you filled an
Olympic-sized swimming pool with printer ink from Hewlett-Packard’s
inkjet cartridges, the bill would come to $5.9 billion (£3.2 billion).
It would be cheaper to fill the pool with Dom Perignon, or petrol.

Here’s another fact about the computer business: Hewlett- Packard
virtually owns the printer ink market, yet its shares are about as
popular as paper-jams, and its chief financial officer says that the
company might have to confess to squandering as much as $14.5 billion on
a failed merger.

How can the company behind one of the most lucrative franchises on the
planet be in such trouble? The answer can be summed up in five letters:
C-A-R-L-Y.

Meet Carleton S. Fiorina, a woman so famous in America that she is
known, like Arnie, or Cher, by only her first name. She is 50 years old,
has a “trophy husband� called Frank, travels with a miniature dog and
once drank a beer-mug of vodka to impress frat boys at Stanford
University.

In 1999 she became chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, the oldest and
most venerable company in Silicon Valley.

The company, like Carly, is known by its abbreviated form: HP. Five
years after taking control, Fiorina was $70 million richer. And the
sleepy, hippyish corporation she inherited had almost doubled in size.
Today, HP has annual revenues of $73 billion, more than double the GDP
of Kuwait.

But this tale of female empowerment doesn’t have an Oprah Winfrey
ending. Early on Wednesday morning, Fiorina cancelled her lunch at the
White House and dispatched two unsmiling security guards to keep the
press away from her Silicon Valley home. Then, before drafting a
humiliating public statement, she bade farewell to her 142,000 workers,
her fleet of corporate jets and her $3.2 million salary. “While I regret
that the board and I have differences about how to execute HP’ s
strategy,� she said, “I respect their decision.�

The reign of Queen Carly was over.

According to some reports, there were cheers and champagne toasts as
Fiorina’s bulletproof hairdo made its way for the last time through
Hewlett-Packard’s revolving doors at 3000 Hanover Street, in Palo Alto,
California. Others, however, were choked with disappointment. This was a
woman, after all, who had redefined what it meant to be a 21st century
chief executive and who had helped to swing a hammer at the double-
glazed ceiling that kept female executives out of the top jobs in
corporate America. Now she had failed spectacularly.

According to her least sympathetic critics, Fiorina had taken a 66-year-
old Silicon Valley institution, driven out its founding family members,
traded away its most valuable asset, destroyed its internal culture
(“the HP way�) and lost an astonishing sum of money in the process. It
wasn’t HP’s strategy she executed, the critics said, it was the company
itself.

HP’s employees never really warmed to Fiorina. She represented a new
breed of corporate leader, not only because she was a woman in the
Dockers-and-polo-shirt technology industry, but also because she was a
sales person, not an operations person. Her outsider status, however,
didn’t stop her portrait appearing on the wall of HP’s headquarters
alongside those of the company’s founders, William Hewlett and David
Packard, or “Bill and Dave� as they are fondly known.

Fiorina’s first move as boss was to try to get into the consulting
business through a $19 billion deal. But the idea fell flat, and Carly
had to think of something else. A week before the attacks of September
11, 2001, she announced that she would buy Compaq Computer, a Texas
rival, for $18 billion.

It all started to get nasty when Walter Hewlett, the eldest son of Bill
Hewlett, vowed to fight the deal. Fiorina launched a personal attack on
Hewlett worthy of the most venal politician. In a letter to
shareholders, she dismissed him as “a musician and an academic�.

But Hewlett, of course, was right. The merger, by most conventional
yardsticks, was a howling, flea-ridden dog. Even Fortune magazine, which
was for years Fiorina’s loudest cheerleader, turned on her."

[article continues in same vein]

posted to c.s.i.p.h.chips only.

--
..sigmonster on vacation

[Bob Niland]

> Mike Tomlinson <mike@NOSPAM.jasper.org.uk> wrote:
Interesting article in today's Times (UK), [article continues in same vein]

The whole thing appears to be available at:
<http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8210-1480177,00.html>
and continues at:
<http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8210-1480177_2,00.html>

"... Fiorina cancelled her lunch at the White House ..."

The board actually derailed a Presidential photo op?
That's quite a slap-down.

Still waiting to see who replaces her ...

--
Regards, Bob Niland mailto:name@ispname.tld
http://www.access-one.com/rjn email4rjn AT yahoo DOT com
NOT speaking for any employer, client or Internet Service Provider.

[daytripper]

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 22:17:08 -0600, Bob Niland <email4rjn@yahoo.com> wrote:
Mike Tomlinson <mike@NOSPAM.jasper.org.uk> wrote: Interesting article in today's Times (UK), [article continues in same vein]The whole thing appears to be available at:<http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8210-1480177,00.html>and continues at:<http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8210-1480177_2,00.html>"... Fiorina cancelled her lunch at the White House ..."The board actually derailed a Presidential photo op?That's quite a slap-down.Still waiting to see who replaces her ...

Any undertaker will do just fine for the task at hand...

[chrisv]

Mike Tomlinson wrote:
But Hewlett, of course, was right. The merger, by most conventionalyardsticks, was a howling, flea-ridden dog. Even Fortune magazine, whichwas for years Fiorina’s loudest cheerleader, turned on her."

What a surprise. The big computer-industry mergers always turn out to
be a disaster, it seems. Recall the Burroughs/Sperry merger.