With back-to-back poor quarterly earnings reports, Hewlett-Packard isn't willing to give Leo Apotheker any more time to turn the company around. Apotheker took the helm about 10 months ago -- soon after the board fired its last CEO, Mark Hurd, amid allegations of misconduct.
According to The New York Times, Meg Whitman is the leading candidate to replace the former SAP CEO. Whitman served as the CEO for eBay and currently sits on the board of directors at HP. The New York Times cited anonymous sources; if the rumors hold true, this will be the third CEO in a row HP has fired, dating back to Carly Fiorina.
Apotheker's moves in his 10-month tenure have included putting the kibosh on the webOS operating system (software for which HP paid $1.2 billion), the $11.7 billion acquisition of Autonomy (which analysts insist was overpriced), the failure of the TouchPad tablet, and the potential spinoff of the PC business. HP stock has dipped nearly 50 percent since Apotheker took over.
Mistrusting the Board
"Apotheker was brought on board to orchestrate a major change in the company. He's only been there 10 months," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group. "It would take at least two years for his changes to have effect. Anybody who thought changing HP from a hardware company to what is going to be largely a software company was going to be painless must have missed a few meetings."
Enderle is speculating about a possible unpleasant reality: someone from within the board is orchestrating this leak for their own stardom. In other words, an HP board member or group of board members may be unofficially jockeying to get Apotheker out to put in a favored candidate now rather than in two years. If that truth comes out, Enderle said, the people involved cannot be trusted.
"This is not the typical way a board replaces a CEO. The decision is made confidentially. The CEO is told first and then the announcement is made," Enderle said. "These leaks are trying to orchestrate something either from inside the board or inside Hewlett-Packard by someone who has designs on that job. And it's one of the series of leaks that have come out over time. It looks like there is a secondary agenda if not a mini-rebellion going on at HP."
HP's Most Serious Problem
Whitman has held key executive positions at some of America's most well known brands, including Disney, Stride Rite, FTD and Hasbro. She is also credited with steering eBay through the dot-com rise and fall and avoiding the crash and burn that was the fate of so many of its contemporaries.
When Whitman joined eBay in 1998, it had 30 employees and $4.7 million in revenues. In 10 years, she grew the company to nearly $8 billion in revenues with 15,000 employees worldwide. Whitman later ran for governor of California and lost.
According to The New York Times, if HP hires Whitman as CEO it would likely be for a permanent position, not interim. Part of the problem with Apotheker, as the Times reports, is his communication style. That stance is bolstered by a lawsuit filed against HP claiming execs misled investors about the company's state. But the company's biggest problem may be the reputation for board leaks.
"HP has an environment where leaks are apparently allowed and this practice has transitioned across board members. It's probably HP's most serious problem," Enderle said. "If they cannot contain the leaks, no CEO could be successful at running this company. Leaks create the impression that the board isn't behind its CEO, and it's very hard to get anything done when that's the case."
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20110922/bs_nf/80302
business business news news latest news us news key news best news economic news finance news economic news
No comments:
Post a Comment