

HP Board Said to Weigh Ousting Apotheker as CEO - mvs
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-21/hp-s-board-is-said-to-weigh-ousting-apotheker-after-less-than-year-as-ceo.html

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dr_
What kind of nonsense is this? It's the board of directors that needs to be
dismantled and reorganized. I'm indifferent to HP as a company so it doesn't
matter to me what their corporate strategy is. However, if you bring in a new
CEO to run your company, how can you fire the guy in less than a year, before
that strategy has even been given a chance? He wants to focus on the
enterprise software business, and I'm sure thats something he must have told
them before he came on board. So then let him do it.

~~~
commandar
>However, if you bring in a new CEO to run your company, how can you fire the
guy in less than a year, before that strategy has even been given a chance?

You can do it when the market has clearly responded to the new strategy by
absolutely brutalizing your stock price[1], and when investors are in turn
suing because the new strategy flies in the face of everything you've been
telling them about the company for the past eighteen months.

[1]
[http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...](http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1316635200000&chddm=25024&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NYSE:HPQ&ntsp=0)

~~~
jbooth
Sure, you can do it but it's just CYA for a mistake of the board's.

I mean presumably they discussed this strategy with Apotheker before bringing
him on, right? He didn't just go rogue on them? So they approve the plan,
bring him on, and then when people don't like it, jettison him as a scapegoat.
Which is fine, don't play in the big leagues if you think life's going to be
fair. But the board are at fault here.

~~~
chollida1
> I mean presumably they discussed this strategy with Apotheker before
> bringing him on, right? He didn't just go rogue on them?

Yes this is a certainty. No CEO could make a 10 billion dollar acquisition
without board approval.

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vailripper
So he's doing a bad job, and their solution is to bring in....Meg Whitman?
Seriously?

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RexRollman
That's crazy talk.

~~~
redorb
Agreed I took it as a joke. Honestly I think anyone that you would give the
CEO title to at a multi billion dollar company should also be given the trust
to pursue the chosen strategy that the board approved.

On the other hand, its a huge turn for HP to sell off the leader of a segment
and try software.

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gamble
The board should fire themselves.

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raganwald
And not just for past incompetence. Let’s say their super-smooth CEO
headhunter flies into Toronto and takes me to breakfast.

“What the board wants,” he will say, shooting his cuffs, “is a visionary who
will have the courage to take strong action.”

“I see,” I will murmur, swirling the dregs of espresso around the bottom of my
cup, eying the way the perfect crema lines the exquisite porcelain. “And am I
to understand that if my ‘vision’ doesn’t meet with immediate public acclaim
or if I can’t restructure the future of the company AND hit immediate sales
targets, you’ll be having breakfast with someone else?”

How is _this_ board going to hire anyone capable of making bets if they fire
Leo before his bets could pay off? Who would want a job working for people
like this? If they didn’t like his moves, they should have exercised
governance and let him know what he could and couldn’t do. If they were doing
their jobs and they let him make these kinds of moves, they should support him
and not throw him under a bus.

~~~
jrockway
_Who would want a job working for people like this?_

How much does it pay? Assuming you are guaranteed a year's salary and that
that salary is in the $millions range, it doesn't seem like a total waste of
time.

I volunteer myself for this job.

~~~
PakG1
[http://www.businessinsider.com/soon-to-be-canned-hp-ceo-
apot...](http://www.businessinsider.com/soon-to-be-canned-hp-ceo-apotheker-
will-get-94-million-for-his-lousy-year-of-work-2011-9)

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siglesias
I don't get it. Apotheker has already done the damage and realigned the
company to his competency, enterprise software. How is firing him going to
make things better?

~~~
jobu
Enterprise software may be Apotheker's core competency, but I don't think it
has been proven this is HP's core competency.

Maybe they expected Apotheker to do more in building the enterprise before he
started killing HP's consumer business.

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georgekv
Someone should snap up the PC division pronto ... in order to sell it back to
HP at a 300% markup.

At this point, I'm sure the board would approve it.

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gentle
Apotheker needs to go. What's happening to HP is a real tragedy and he should
be stopped before he destroys the company.

~~~
gvb
I'm afraid it is much too late. Cringely had an excellent discussion of why
and how it is too late: <http://www.cringely.com/tag/bill-hewlett/>

~~~
Steko
Cringely had an even better call in February:

[http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/why-leo-apotheker-will-be-
fi...](http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/why-leo-apotheker-will-be-fired-from-
hewlett-packard/)

He can be a bit of a nutter sometimes but man was this spot on with the
Whitman call and Apotheker's hail mary of a huge enterprise acquisition:

"Then there’s Meg Whitman, who expected at this point to have resigned from
the HP board to spend all her time running California as governor. But that
didn’t happen, so now what is she to do? You can only get so many pedicures.
She’ll eventually get around to hip-checking Apotheker and taking his job. Meg
can knock back brewskies as well as any man and will probably fill those CEO
shoes even better than Apotheker.

I know I am speaking early about this but that’s why I get the big bucks.

There is only one chance Apotheker has to save his job and that’s by buying
his old company, SAP. "

~~~
0x12
It's downright scary how accurate that prediction is.

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mbesto
It'll be interesting to see who will pick him up next. He's part of the CEO
boys club right?

FYI - even though he "resigned" from within SAP in Sept 2010, everyone I've
spoken to said he was politely asked to leave.

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rbanffy
The real question is whether the damage Apotheker did can be undone. I think
it can, but the window is closing fast. By the time the engineering talent
departs to greener pastures, it will be too late.

~~~
ghshephard
[http://allthingsd.com/20110919/layoffs-at-hps-palm-
division/...](http://allthingsd.com/20110919/layoffs-at-hps-palm-
division/?mod=huffpost)

~~~
rbanffy
They can always hire back those who didn't find better employment.

~~~
0x12
The ones that didn't find better employment are likely not the ones at the top
of their game.

And seriously, after your employer pulls a stunt like that would you go back?

~~~
rbanffy
It depends on what the CEO got.

What bothers me is that it doesn't matter how incompetent Apotheker is and how
suicidal his decisions at the helm of HP were, he'll leave it with a lot of
money.

If we reward failure like this, how can we expect people to make the effort
needed to succeed?

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sunchild
It seems like the beginning of the end was the EDS integration. My guess is
that the "Global IT Services" group is behind this "new" strategy (which is
the same strategy IBM Global Services implemented more than a decade ago to
great success). These companies consume their own young, and watching them
hack themselves to pieces is not pretty.

~~~
mbesto
Yup. The EDS integration was a mess. I've spoken to several HP employees about
this. Just the mindless switching of e-mails and corporate structure was
enough to get them disgruntled.

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jmount
F'ing pick Bartz.

~~~
Raphael
That would be quite the promotion.

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desireco42
You can oust them all you want now that he wrecked HP. Who brought him and let
him do this should take a blame.

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chugger
HP and Yahoo have the worst board ever. Both of these companies should hire a
young product-oriented visionary as their next CEO.

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bauchidgw
or they should merge into "Hahoo" ... yeah, i know this would solve nothing

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ilovedelphi2
No you're right they should merge and they have been planning to for months
and after giving $10,000,000 to a marketing firm the board decided on YewPoo.

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chugger
Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman Being Considered for HP CEO Job to Replace
Apotheker.

[http://allthingsd.com/20110921/former-ebay-ceo-meg-
whitman-b...](http://allthingsd.com/20110921/former-ebay-ceo-meg-whitman-
being-considered-for-hp-ceo-job-to-replace-apotheker/)

