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Meg “Mini Mitt” Whitman gritted her teeth and announced the worst quarter in Hewlett Packard’s 73 year history. Part of the loss is due to a write-down of the value of EDS which HP acquired from Ross Perot in 2008, and also due to the cost of severance payments to the first wave of the 27,000 workers Whitman sacked.
Revenue declined in each of HP’s four major business segments: Personal Systems; Services; Imaging and Printing; Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking.
Whitman, who has been described as Mitt Romney’s “protigee” at Bain & Company from 1981 to 1989, was also funded by his big donors during her 2010 California gubernatorial bid.
She has been at the helm of HP for almost a year now, and nobody is saying that HP wasn’t a troubled company, or that turning it around would be easy. But her future plans for the company sounded a bit vague on this week’s analyst call:
[W]hen we look at 2013, we’re going to tumble all of the pluses and the minuses. We’re going to put in the investments that we think are required, and yet we have to have a cost structure that allows us to win in the marketplace. So, we’ll have a crisp view of that by 2013.”
“Crisp view?” Is that oligarch-speak for “bumpy ride?”
If she does indeed know where she’s going, she’s doing a crappy job of communicating it — a critically important quality in someone who wanted a job inspiring confidence in voters. “Governor Meg” was a bullet well-dodged.
50 Comments
Heh.
I was in CA when she was running for Governor, it was a rough campaign, I didn’t know about the Bain connection. Explains a lot.
I think when she uses the term “crisp view of that by 2013″ it will somehow involve Mitten’s Etch-A-Sketch. Clean slate, turning a new “crisp” leaf . . . that kinda thing.
Milton/Bradley 2012!!1!
Meggard’s run in CA was a trial run for Willard. Here’s hoping the results are the same.
I bought an HP two weeks ago and one of the three fans was going crazy as soon as I turned it on. Although the HP Rep (in India) took about 30 pain-staking minutes to get my info (“No, that’s ‘T’ as in ‘Tom”) I was able to return it for a refund.
My guess is they laid off all the American workers.
It has to be comforting for her to know that being rich and white means it is impossible for her to be held responsible or accountable for an adverse outcome./s
I did not think of that. The etch-a-sketch connection — of course!
That would be interesting to know — did the 27,000 that were sacked in the US have their jobs shipped overseas? Should take a look at the 10Q.
Sad to say that since Dave Hewlett & Bill Packard stop running HP, it’s been run into the ground by a bunch of “insider” old boys/girls network 1%ers, who all follow the Bain model of “management,” esp these days.
Y’all might recall that Meggers was (not immediately) preceded by Carly Fiorina – another “rock star” wanna be loser who (and I don’t usually say stuff like this, but it’s true) slept her way to the top at HP, after running Lucent into the ground. Fiorina was spectacular FAILURE at the helm of HP and was FIRED by HP heirs. Needless to say, after Fiorina sacked tens of thousands of US workers and off-shored jobs to the third world, Fiorina walked away from HP with a honking huge golden parachute … to “reward” her for her gi-normous FAILURE.
I could go on. The Losers that have been paraded thru HP post Fiorina have been no better, yet they all get signed on with honking huge FIRING bonuses.
Who loses? Not just US workers, but also HP shareholders. HP stock continues to plumet, and per usual, these 1% shitheads laugh their flaming asses off all the way to their off-shore bank accounts, where they stock pile their filthy lucre in order to build “war chests” to go buy a public office… all the better to rip off US tax payers in yet another way: Yeee-haw! Platinum-plated pensions & health care for life!!!
When I saw that the HP Board had hired Meggers to be the next bestest CEO evah, I just cringed… cuz ya knows she’s gonna run that sucker into the ground after she vampire suck$ whatever ca$h she can get for her$elf.
My loathing and contempt knows no bounds. Thanks for highlighting Meg’s tutelege in all things CRIMINAL at Bain. Didn’t know that, but utterly unsurprised. These greedy shitheads all scratch each other$ back$, don’t they??????
I was forced in that election to vote against my conscience and vote for the lesser of two vampiric EVILS. I’ll take Jerry Brown & Babs Boxer over those two rat-fucking $hit$, Whitman & Fiorina.
She doesn’t know Jack Shit. These ass-hats follow the same pattern in every troubled company. First, it’s musical chairs in the boardroom. When that doesn’t work, they start cutting the workforce. After that fails, they sell off subdivisions of the company. The bleeding continues, so they run up debt and use their golden parachutes to bail out leaving the poor saps on the production lines holding the bag. The rich pricks are then hired as Whizz Kids to wreak havoc on another company. I experienced this first hand in the mid 80s when I worked for Control Data Corporation in Minneapolis. Never heard of CDC? They rivaled IBM and Sperry/Univac but no longer exist. Atta Boy, schmucks. You did a bang-up job saving the company.
If she keeps this up, we should be having a crisp view of her likeness on some very crispy toast.
Certainly in the past, HP jobs have been shipped overseas. Carly Fiorina shipped something like 30,000 jobs to third world countries, and yet HP STILL went down the drain.
Yet when Fiorina ran for Senator from CA, all my rightwing friends were agog & swooning bc of Fiorina’s “business acumen.” I mean: seriously, if rightwings want *any* credibility at all, at least pick people who, you know, actually run businesses that are profitable and are not just run down the drain.
Seriously! WTF does Meg-the-knife Whitman even KNOW about the business that HP is IN?? Whitman is alleged to have done such “great things” with EBay, but I hear-tell that it’s mainly her knowledge of how to do insider trading that led to her riche$.
Puh-leeze.
Don’t cry for Meg. If she gets FIRED for being the abject FAILURE that she is, she’ll stoll away with a gazillion dollar golden parachute.
Meg’s like, all, What??? ME Worry??
It’s become fairly clear that Republicans actually don’t know how to run anything. That’s why the dodge and weave when questions are asked. Mitt’s answers are as vague as smoke because he hasn’t a clue about what to do.
Dear Meg:
Prepare three envelopes…
Yours
Carly
Ah, but there’s a silver lining here!
We have finally achieved gender equality! Now a woman can become the head of a big powerful corporation, dick over its workers, screw up the bottom line, and still get $$$ millions in salary/benefits, and a golden parachute.
Just the like the guys have always done!
Capitalism is Fraud.
It is not vague. The reality is SHE HAS NO PLAN. She seems to be hoping someone will give her the plan.
She screwed up eBay too. They managed to get rid of her fat butt although it took ten years.
With respect, I disagree. Meg’s “plan” most likely is to suck as much money out of HP – in a Bain-like fashion – and traipse happily away with lot$ of ca$h for herself. With Vampira Meg at the helm, I doubt that HP is long for this world.
See comment @10, above. These “captains of industry” aren’t really try to “save” any businesses anymore. The new “model” (which ain’t that new) is just to run them into the ground, whilst blood-sucking whatever they can leech out of it for themselves.
I disagree that Whitman doesn’t have a plan. It’s just that she doesn’t want to reveal what it is… which is to rip off as much as possible before being “fired” and getting a ginormous pay-out. That’s the plan. Count on it.
When they appointed her I wondered what she brought to the party other than being a darling of the wingnuts like Carly Fiorima. That said HP has been a troubled company for quite some time. She sounds like she is lost. One would think that,before you report earnings you have some idea what you are going to do and what your problem was. Seems she is clueless just like Fiorima, the woman who told us her job was harder than being President.
Wasn’t she supposed to be the “savior” of HP? Get rid of the dead weight and brain dead CEO’s, CFO’s, COO’s and the let workers take over the company.
Did she get a big fat raise yet? you know, to pay for the car elevator and football stadium in the basement? that’s all the rage these days I hear.
You might be right. Using the tried and true organized crime “bust out.”
That’s some mighty fine Newspeak, there Meg, but have you considered that you might need to close-the-loop on repurposing team synergies in order to leverage up to a helicopter view, thus achieving mission-critical, paradigm shift status? Gotta have all this shit to make the thing run right, right?
Thanks, Jane. Great catch.
To be fair, the EDS acquisition was under a previous CEO. Some employees were offered early retirement option that was as generous as it ever was. She is also not taking a salary, will have to see if she forgoes bonus end of this fiscal year and have to see how big her options and grants will be.
She is not really qualified to run a company like HP, the worthless, dysfunctional board just handed her the job.
The layoffs, 27000 by end of next year, are part of the continuing saga of cost cutting at HP, so, no immediate replacements in India/China. If any major hiring happens, I am sure it will be overseas.
After the destruction of R&D at this venerated engineering company, started under Fiorina but escalated under Mark Hurd, cost cutting seems to be the only trick the CEO knows to increase profit.
After making all the right noises at ascension, Whitman seems to have no ideas about running this company.
My brother worked for HP as an engineer until he had to…ahumm…take early retirement.
Whitman was not loved there by the engineers and from what I have heard, this is not big surprise.
“future plans are a bit vague”
Sounds like Willard’s campaign slogan.
A little OT, but recent picts of Willard show circles/puffy eyes and appears burned-out. He is 65. If Willard gets in will he be a repeat of Raygun who was literally asleep at the wheel?
Agree about worthless Board. Fiorina & Hurd were bad enough appointments to the throne of HP, but Whitman is a particularly clueless choice. Fiorina & Hurd, at least, had some level of experience in this industry. Whitman? Not. One. Iota.
It really galled me, as a shareholder, to witness this level of incompetence in appointing CEOs. I’m sure that Whitman is being compensated in some way (or will be) for this. There’s no way that this thieving corrupt POS would do this for “free.”
But agree that the Board is useless as well, but then again, the same 1% rotate around these various Boards, and they all make sure that they are very highly compensative for their “hard work.” It’s really obscene what a scam all of this is.
There’s no reason that HP should be doing as poorly as this. None. It’s gross incompetence and grift at the top that’s doing it.
Xerox is experiencing some of the same stuff, though not quite so intense…yet.
I well remember HP as a tough competitor of Tektronix, when HP was a general instrumentation company while Tek was focused on oscilloscopes. HP did a brilliant move on Tek (details too long) and forced a technology exchange which helped propel HP as a genuine alternative to a Tek scope. Ultimately, it worked to both side’s advantage, but that was when HP was HP, not an iconic logo. Both sides admired the other.
Things really started changing in the mid 70′s or so.
Lot of that going around in corporate America letely. If one were to compile a list of incompetent CEO’s who looted the company, drove it ot the edge of bankruptcy, and left with a “platinum” parachute, it’d be one biiigggg list.
She’ll probably get free use of the corporate jet for the next five years. Now that’s pretty popular. Ask Jack Welch at GE.
I assume you mean corps biting off more than they could chew. Buying out all competitors regardless of the price. Paying huge salaries along with stock options to minimally important exectuves. Let’s not forget big advertising money on things like sporting events that benefit only the executives, like NASCAR and INDY 500, and Super Bowl. BIg $$$ tolobbyists and PAC contributions.
Yes. Absolutely. As a shareholder, it’s really very aggravating how insane this has all become. Yet conservatives like to *pretend* that it’s solely and only the fault of the “overpaid” proles in the trenches, plus benefits, etc.
Most corp CEOs are crap, if you ask me. A bunch of over-hyped MBAs who were taught only how to rob & steal through “leveraging” and bankruptcies, not, you know, how to be a good manager, steward, leader, innovater and competently run a company.
It’s really one of the biggest GRIFTS in Team USA todays. Most other CONS, like those of the fundy mega-church “preachers” or idiots like Sarah Tundra Trash, pale by comparison.
Cripes it is hard to be the worse CEO in 73 years but Meg has the right idea as far as Mitt is concerned.
Dinosaurs, H-P and Dell too. Maybe the whole PC niche. Windows 8 has a glass jaw among its useless bells and whistles like its predecessors. Put ‘em to bed.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444812704577605703329715394.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/08/23/hewlett-packard-faces-long-and-troubling-turnaround
Many in the corporate class have completely lost their moral compass, and that’s because investors are demanding short term profits at the expense of long term viability and social-environmental responsibility. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to be in Whitman’s shoes. I have to suspect the continuing recession and extremely tough competition are also a drag on many other tech companies like Motorola and Nokia. That is where executive creativity and motivation of employee performance should come in.
The outsourcing problem can only be solved through trade policies that impose penalties and/or taxes on imported products and foreign investments, but we know that’s not going to happen in the current climate.
I think higher education is largely to blame for promoting the greed factor above all else, but there also seems to be some sort of exclusive society that execs enter, where they learn how to be as ruthless and self serving as the financiers that invest the major money.
The global economy nightmare will have to play itself out until resource shortages, infrastructure failures, labor disruptions, and other external factors that can’t be controlled begin to impinge on all the systems that businesses depend on. Some day the executives will learn that they are not islands of self sufficiency.
” … we’re going to tumble all of the pluses and the minuses… ”
That’s safe-cracker’s language, door-lock burglar speak, card sharp cheat talk.
Heavily promoted at the Ivy League MBAs, believe me. Absolutely promote the Gordon Gecko “ethos” that greed is very good & it’s absolutely the done thing to rip off, plunder and pillage as much as possible. Not really snark, either.
I don’t feel at all “sorry” for Witman. Believe me, Whitman is being compensated in one fashion or another. That woman is utterly ruthless and would as soon squash all of the 99% like bugs as do anything worthwhile. That said, choosing Whitman to be CEO of HP made the previous choice of Fiorina almost look “intelligent.” Whitman has no ability to do squat for HP. It’s a ludicrious appt.
Ridiculously naive. The fraudsters are evolving their excuses but are not returning their take.
This is what capitalists do. When are you going to learn?
I smell a lot of comprador regret.
HP was such a great company at one time and it is terrible to see it go down like this. I know people at HP and know EDS people who got screwed by Whitman (not literally) although that might be a worse fate! The shame of all of this nonsense is we could have a better world. I have been working in Corporate America for years and there some very bright hardworking people who care but the top Executives really (not all cases)only care about themselves!
After devastating Ebay, “Hurricane Meg” ravages another company again!
Meg Whitman is the prototypical Ivy League graduate who doesn’t know shit but is able to advance herself using the connections that her alumni network provides. (Corporate America, academia, the leadership of both parties, and government at all levels are full of these types hence look at the shitty economy the bottom 99.5% find themselves in! Maybe if society stopped placing people in power just because of connections and an Ivy League pedigree, maybe the economy will start functioning properly.) HP is on its way towards an LBO or an M&A to a competitor. In either case, Meg will enrich herself through fat CEO compensation packages and a golden parachute while friends at Goldman and other cronies can pick apart HP’s assets like vultures feed on a dead animal carcass.
Who will be the losers? HP employees especially engineers who will lose their jobs to outsourcing and cost cutting.
The rule of thumb is that, if you work in Silicon Valley and Meg Whitman becomes your company’s CEO, IT’S TIME TO LOOK FOR A NEW JOB!
(As an aside, I am so glad I voted for Jerry Brown in the last election and that Brown won the CA governorship. If Whitman had become governor of CA, I would’ve moved to Siberia.)
Thanks, Jane.
Hey, I voted for Jerry, and I didn’t hold my nose.
Didn’t she spend, like, a lot of money on that losing campaign?
Well, I guess some businesses had a spike in their money making.
Not going to happen in a comprador nation.
Meg “Chainsaw” Whitman. The HP board should be shot.
How are you using comprador?
I refer to those cultivated by the colonizer to suppress the subaltern.
Americans, long fed a diet of financial nonsense and capitalist bullshit, in large numbers betray their fellow countrymen for a desperate affiliation with our capitalist colonizers.
Aren’t you feeling like a subaltern yet?
Hey, I’ve been poor all my adult life. I’m not among the middle class fantasists. I’ve never thought I was hard work and a lucky break away from wealth.
One acquires a certain je ne sais quoi, realism, looking from the bottom up.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who can’t seriously pursue wealth who are indoctrinated to faith in their colonizers.