Those who fired me have no courage to face me: Fiorina
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina says she remains puzzled about why she was fired last year.
By Agencies |
NEW YORK: Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina says she remains puzzled about why she was fired last year and contends two board members who were prominent in the company’s recent spying scandal likely engineered her ouster. In her new memoir, “Tough Choices,” Ms Fiorina says HP’s directors never made clear why they wanted her to go, and “didn’t have the courage to face me” to break the news. “The decision to fire me — frankly I know more about what it wasn’t than what it was,” she said Monday in an interview. “It wasn’t about performance.”
HP’s stock had lost more than half its value in her five and a half-year tenure. But she believed the board agreed that the internet bust and early ’00s recession were a major factor. And she found it odd that just before firing her the board had approved her plans for ’05. She suspects, however, that her end at HP was sought by then-directors Thomas Perkins and George Keyworth, whom she saw as counterproductive meddlers. Before her firing she had rejected acquisitions and organisational changes they had suggested.
Ms Fiorina writes that she regrets letting Keyworth spend more time around HP to help keep him occupied after the death of his wife. She also says she erred in letting Mr Perkins return to the board after he had been forced out when he reached mandatory retirement age. Mr Perkins and Mr Keyworth turned out to be linked powerfully again after Ms Fiorina’s ouster, when her successor as chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, ordered the now-infamous investigation into boardroom leaks to the media. Mr Perkins quit in protest and Mr Keyworth resigned after admitting he had talked to reporters without approval from the other directors.
Ms Fiorina said she was “shocked” and “sad” to learn of HP investigators’ tactics, which included impersonating directors, employees and journalists to obtain their phone records. Ms Dunn and four other people have been charged by California’s attorney general. “I think it did lift a veil on the dysfunction that existed in the boardroom,” said Ms Fiorina, who had also felt plagued by directors’ leaks before she was fired. “And perhaps people have some better appreciation of what I was dealing with.”
Mr Keyworth’s attorney, Reginald Brown, declined to comment on the specifics of Ms Fiorina’s characterisation. But Mr Brown said Mr Keyworth always did what he thought was best for HP, which has fared substantially better on Wall Street since Fiorina left. “Mr Keyworth bears Ms Fiorina no ill will,” Mr Brown said. “The merits of his decisions as a director regarding her tenure are reflected in HP’s stock price then and now.”
Mr Keyworth and Mr Perkins are not alone in receiving dings in Ms Fiorina’s 300-page memoir, which details her rise from law school dropout and temporary typist (one stint was at Hewlett-Packard) to a rising star at AT&T, its spinoff Lucent Technologies Inc. and ultimately HP. She has few nice things to say about Ms Dunn, claiming “her opinions were frequently hard to discern.” She also lambastes Michael Capellas, the former CEO of Compaq Computer who left HP six months after HP narrowly won its fight to acquire Compaq for $19bn in ’02. Ms Fiorina depicts Mr Capellas as moody, irrational and “more interested in his own title and position than virtually everything else.”
“I hope one of the things people take out of this book is that I’m not a caricature,” she said. Ms Fiorina seemed more relaxed and less defensive than she frequently did in her HP days, though the company is not far from mind. A few times, when referring to HP’s success since she left — for which she takes credit — and its current prospects, she used the word “we.” When it was pointed out to her, she nodded. “Look, I love HP. I devoted all of myself to that company and those people, and I still have a great deal of contact with HP people, so yes, it’s a very big part of me.”
Asked to elaborate on those contacts, Ms Fiorina said people at HP still write to her. What do they say? “That’s between me and them.”
HP’s stock had lost more than half its value in her five and a half-year tenure. But she believed the board agreed that the internet bust and early ’00s recession were a major factor. And she found it odd that just before firing her the board had approved her plans for ’05. She suspects, however, that her end at HP was sought by then-directors Thomas Perkins and George Keyworth, whom she saw as counterproductive meddlers. Before her firing she had rejected acquisitions and organisational changes they had suggested.
Ms Fiorina writes that she regrets letting Keyworth spend more time around HP to help keep him occupied after the death of his wife. She also says she erred in letting Mr Perkins return to the board after he had been forced out when he reached mandatory retirement age. Mr Perkins and Mr Keyworth turned out to be linked powerfully again after Ms Fiorina’s ouster, when her successor as chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, ordered the now-infamous investigation into boardroom leaks to the media. Mr Perkins quit in protest and Mr Keyworth resigned after admitting he had talked to reporters without approval from the other directors.
Ms Fiorina said she was “shocked” and “sad” to learn of HP investigators’ tactics, which included impersonating directors, employees and journalists to obtain their phone records. Ms Dunn and four other people have been charged by California’s attorney general. “I think it did lift a veil on the dysfunction that existed in the boardroom,” said Ms Fiorina, who had also felt plagued by directors’ leaks before she was fired. “And perhaps people have some better appreciation of what I was dealing with.”
Mr Keyworth’s attorney, Reginald Brown, declined to comment on the specifics of Ms Fiorina’s characterisation. But Mr Brown said Mr Keyworth always did what he thought was best for HP, which has fared substantially better on Wall Street since Fiorina left. “Mr Keyworth bears Ms Fiorina no ill will,” Mr Brown said. “The merits of his decisions as a director regarding her tenure are reflected in HP’s stock price then and now.”
Mr Keyworth and Mr Perkins are not alone in receiving dings in Ms Fiorina’s 300-page memoir, which details her rise from law school dropout and temporary typist (one stint was at Hewlett-Packard) to a rising star at AT&T, its spinoff Lucent Technologies Inc. and ultimately HP. She has few nice things to say about Ms Dunn, claiming “her opinions were frequently hard to discern.” She also lambastes Michael Capellas, the former CEO of Compaq Computer who left HP six months after HP narrowly won its fight to acquire Compaq for $19bn in ’02. Ms Fiorina depicts Mr Capellas as moody, irrational and “more interested in his own title and position than virtually everything else.”
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“I hope one of the things people take out of this book is that I’m not a caricature,” she said. Ms Fiorina seemed more relaxed and less defensive than she frequently did in her HP days, though the company is not far from mind. A few times, when referring to HP’s success since she left — for which she takes credit — and its current prospects, she used the word “we.” When it was pointed out to her, she nodded. “Look, I love HP. I devoted all of myself to that company and those people, and I still have a great deal of contact with HP people, so yes, it’s a very big part of me.”
Asked to elaborate on those contacts, Ms Fiorina said people at HP still write to her. What do they say? “That’s between me and them.”
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