“Meg Whitman, eBay’s former chief executive, will likely be named to lead Hewlett-Packard after markets close on Thursday, according to a person familiar with board decisions. The decision to replace Leo Apotheker, the company’s chief executive, after only 11 months on the job is all but made, lacking only a final vote, said the person, who is not authorized to speak for the board. While Mr. Apotheker is going, his strategy, including consideration of spinning off H.P.’s personal computer business from other parts of the company, will remain in place.”
Th open opinion is to maintain Apotheker’s strategy so as not to make the company look like it has no direction (and lose more share price).
Give it until Whitman’s opening speech to see a new direction. If the board were happy with the current direction they wouldnt be looking for a replacement would they?
The board is only unhappy about the drop in stock price, which they don’t see as connected to the direction of the company. They just wanted it all done more carefully so no one got scared.
stabilise the WebOS userbase. Hp lost a lot of money but now have a Massive userbase from nowhere. I think they will look to take advantage of this and do something clever with WebOS (licence/open source is my guess, they will make the money back via the store)
Whitman, just like every politician/CEO will doom the company, in that she will make it all about herself, and not about the better interests of HP and its shareholders. She’s a publicity hound, and that’s likely to be a serious problem for HP. I hope they reconsider.
No longer expected: has been.
I feel bad for anybody that has to work with her. Having learned an awful lot about her during California’s previous Gubernatorial race, her reputation for actual physical mistreatment of those who work for her is well known. She has a tendency to hit her employees, and has been known to throw heavy objects.
I won’t even get started on the allegations against her family’s wrong doing…
The people who have worked for her at eBay generally – if not universally – speak well of her. Everyone from people ‘at the bottom’ to senior executives.
So just because she would make a poor politician does not mean she makes a poor CEO.
HP will no longer be relevant to consumers, save for their Ink business, since Ink is all margin.
All of their others efforts are going toward “The Enterprise”. Get out of the commodity, low margin, support intensive crap and focus on big sales of big things and the ever important, undefinable, “Services”.
The entire board is an Enterprise person or someone who HP apparently owes money to (i.e. equity firms). There’s one long term science guy, and I bet he leaves.
HP isn’t an engineering company any more, it’s a services company with a legacy hardware business that nobody on the board or the CEO understands.
… umm, HP is the largest manufacturer of consumer PC’s.
That may well be true
But for how long?
This indecision by HP over their PC biz and with Business Purchasing dropping off at an alarming rate plus the domestic purse strings being tightened as well who will want to buy their kit?
Mind you, the last two points apply to other PC makers but at the moment, HP is a ‘sell’.
Whitman is almost a hitman…
http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/22/hp-names-meg-whitman-new-ceo-giv…
So Apotheker Arrived. Murdered WebOS
. Left. Nice work.
Edited 2011-09-23 12:21 UTC
Well, we’ll always have Meego!
I am just wondering why the Nokia board does not take similar actions with Stephen Elop….
They are both opposite of each other. One board fires it’s ceo every week, the other never does.
I think picking the former CEO of EBay was a wise choice. Her leadership and seasoned experience should greatly facilitate the auctioning off of HP’s assets.
PC Business: Auction ending in 5,4,3…
Maybe they’ll start bringing the DEC legacy back! VMS, Itaniums, terminals, all sorts of goodies that consumers don’t want but nerds love. I do admire the fact that they’re trying to differentiate on audio chipsets in the age of ac97 HDA crap, but Beats headphones are overpriced crap, and I have to wonder if the same is true of their soundcards.
now it would be a great time to sell it, or short it.
or buy, its down a fair bit at the moment :-p
Well, sure if you intend in helping those selling or shorting…