Hewlett-Packard Ousts CEO Carly Fiorina
Wed Feb 9, 2005 08:02 PM ET
By Eric Auchard
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co.(HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Wednesday ousted Chairman and Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, the architect of a controversial $19 billion merger with Compaq Computer that never produced the results she promised.
Chief Financial Officer Robert Wayman, who was named as interim chief executive, said HP did not plan to split the company up, but that the board would not be "closed-minded" on strategy changes once it locates a new CEO. <...>
Fiorina, 50, HP's first outside leader, took over in 1999 with a mandate to revitalize Silicon Valley's original start-up, founded in 1938. HP had become known for an insular and balkanized corporate culture celebrated internally as "The HP Way." <...>
That's funny... I have a friend who retired early, and quite "well to do" because he was engineering test and measurement techniques for hard drives in the 1970s, and the "balkanized" HP cut him in on a patent for measuring the "flying height" of the head of the drive over the disk using light refraction through the head-disk gap.
I'll bet Carly's HP never did that for anyone whose title started with anything less than VP.
L
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