Word: fiorina
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...last place Carly Fiorina expected to be last Wednesday was home. A hard-driving, jet-setting business titan, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard had a packed calendar that week, including a meeting with President Bush. She had recently returned from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where she always loomed large, even at an event stuffed with corporate Pooh-Bahs and heads of state. Now, holed up in her Los Altos Hills, Calif., home and protected by three security guards, she fielded e-mails from well-wishers and contemplated her next career move--just like so many other cashiered Silicon...
...right down to the corporate logo. Asked to create a strategic vision for a company that had none, she came up with dazzling insights into "transformational trends" and a hyperdigital future in which HP would serve consumers and corporations at every stage. But the board ultimately concluded that Fiorina had one significant weakness as a chief executive: she just wasn't very good at running the business. That's a problem when you head an $80 billion behemoth with lackluster earnings that is beset on all sides by competitors like IBM, EMC and Dell. "Looking forward, we think...
...That Fiorina, 50, lost a power struggle to her board is emblematic of a dramatic shift taking place in corporate America. With board members of companies from Disney to Enron getting hauled into court to answer for their stewardship, directors are becoming ever more emboldened to give poor- performing CEOs the boot. In fact, 92 CEOs departed in January, the highest number since February 2001, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm. "Boards are trying to demonstrate that they are doing their duty," says Warren Batts of the University of Chicago, former CEO and director of several FORTUNE...
...Fiorina incur her board's ire? In part, it was simple hubris. HP's directors had been voicing unhappiness with her performance for months, particularly after some dismal earnings numbers were posted last summer. Increasingly disillusioned with her inability to deliver the profits she promised, the board was stung by her refusal to make changes or relinquish operating responsibility in HP's floundering computer business. "She played a brinkmanship game and didn't realize the other side wouldn't budge," says Rob Enderle, a tech analyst in San Jose, Calif. "It's a game she's used to playing...
...descent in December, when IBM decided to sell its money-losing personal-computer business to Lenovo, a Chinese company. IBM had concluded that a PC was a commodity, little more than a toaster that also does long division, and its decision to get out of the business spotlighted Fiorina's opposite bet. Under her command, HP in 2002 spent $19 billion buying Compaq, largely to expand its position in PCs and fight off Dell, the market's low-cost leader. Though the merger had produced cost savings--and wrenching layoffs--profits remained hard to come by. In 2003, despite Fiorina...