Free Republic

In 2010, Fiorina's Senate campaign was severely undermined by a series of attack ads that emphasized her failure as a Hewlett-Packard CEO. Could this happen again? Carly Fiorina is doing well in polls. As Donald Trump saw his support drastically diminish following the second GOP debate, the businesswoman swiftly rose to No. 2 with 15 percent of Republican support. But critics are skeptical that her success will persist. The reason? Her dismal tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, during which 30,000 employees were laid off. In 2010, Mrs. Fiorina ran for Senate in California, against Democratic incumbent...

HER silver tongue honed by decades in corporate marketing, Carly Fiorina has used two debates, and a steely determination on the campaign trail, to climb near the top of the polls for the Republican nomination. But Americans should pause on her biggest professional credential for our highest office: a short, disastrous stint atop one of America’s iconic technology companies, Hewlett-Packard. The clearest measure of her performance — and the report card preferred by Wall Street — is H.P.’s stock price, which dropped by 52 percent during her tenure of almost six years. Yes, Mrs. Fiorina served during the worst fall...

That Carly Fiorina was a one-woman wrecking crew during her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard was never in doubt. But what follows is a tale that is now being picked up and distributed as the Republican Party seeks a nominee who combines business savvy and executive know-how. Sadly, the former executive who most closely fits this particular bill also has exhibited the kind of corporate arrogance and blind certitude that came close to sinking what had been considered among the world’s best technology companies: Hewlett-Packard. At HP beginning in the mid-1990s, Fiorina was responsible for the ill-fated merger with Compaq,...

Fiorina, pictured in 1999, says on the campaign trail that she had to burn down Hewlett Packard in order to save it. Carly Fiorina’s business background is an essential part of the story she tells on the campaign trail, offering an “only in America” biographical tale of her journey from secretary to CEO. Yet the crowning achievement of her corporate career -- her tenure as a Fortune 500 CEO at Hewlett-Packard -- isn't central to her stump speech. Repeating the same lines from stop to stop, Fiorina rails against an "inept, corrupt bureaucracy." She offers herself up as a leader...

It’s hard to overestimate the impact that two young Stanford graduates, working in a small wooden garage behind a brown shingled house in 1939, had on the world of high technology. Without David Packard and William Hewlett, there would probably be no Silicon Valley. The pair were known not just for technical innovation and global success. They were accidental corporate chieftains who created an ethos of profitability, humility and collegiality that came to be known as “the HP Way.” Their doors were not just always open; they didn’t even have doors. They enshrined the idea of “management by wandering.” “Bill...

As Carly Fiorina gains increased media attention and ramps up her presidential campaign after her strong performance in the second Republican debate last week, she may still be struggling to overcome the obstacles that led to her defeat the only previous time she sought elected office. While Fiorina has billed herself as an "outsider" candidate, she does have political experience -- she just wasn’t successful. Her 2010 campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer in California saw fierce campaigning (she’s often remembered for the “demon sheep” ad) and pressure on Fiorina to defend her business record before the former Hewlett-Packard...

Carly Fiorina made several false, misleading and unsubstantiated claims in responding to questions about Hewlett-Packard’s involvement with a foreign subsidiary that sold products in Iran. The former HP CEO claimed that a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation “proved that neither I nor anyone else in management knew about” a Hewlett-Packard subsidiary doing business in Iran. We have found no such ruling from the SEC, nor could Fiorina’s campaign provide one. She also claimed that the company that actually sold HP products in Iran was “not honest” with HP about its dealings. But that company said in a 2003 press release...

Carly Fiorina’s campaign is defending her record as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. In a post published on Medium, Fiorina’s Deputy Campaign Manager Sarah Isgur Flores took on criticism about the candidate, pushing back on recent reports characterizing the retired tech executive's tenure as a failure. “There’s a lot of armchair CEO’ing going on around here. And some folks seem to have taken the ‘Invent’ motto to mean they get to invent their own facts,” Isgur Flores writes, referring to the HP motto during Fiorina’s tenure. Fiorina was fired in 2005. Isgur Flores then goes on to list 10 things she...

HP's plan to shift workers off its payroll and have them work as contract workers for a partner named Ciber isn't going exactly as planned, multiple sources have told Business Insider. HP didn't actually follow through with its threat to fire all of the employees if they refused the new job offer. A few of the employees who refused the new offer are now being asked to stay on at HP as if no layoff ultimatum ever happened. To recap: HP told several hundred employees in its Enterprise Services division, HP's consulting unit, that HP had lined up a new...

Carly Fiorina said on The Tonight Show that her track record at HP included improving market share. But that’s not true. Carly Fiorina’s latest defense of her track record at Hewlett Packard doesn’t quite add up. Monday night, on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the GOP Presidential hopeful stepped up her effort to paint her time at the top of one of the nation’s largest technology companies as a success. Fallon remarked that her rise from a secretary at a small real estate company to the head of HP HPQ -2.42% was remarkable, but he also mentioned critics who...

The woman who fended off Carly Fiorina to retain her Senate seat in 2010 says when America learns more about Fiorina's business record and "mean" spirit, she will no longer be riding high in the polls. As Fiorina soars in recent surveys for the Republican presidential nomination on the back of two strong debate performances, the race between the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and California Sen. Barbara Boxer is coming back into the spotlight. -snip- "When you examine her record and the fact that she shipped 30,000 jobs overseas and forced those beautiful employees to even train their foreign replacements, when...

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is riding high since she put up another strong debate performance on Wednesday, with a new poll showing her vaulting into second place in the GOP primary. But she is set to face more scrutiny befitting her status in the top tier of the GOP primary race. One example was the grilling she took during an interview with Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." Fiorina, who lost a Senate bid by 10 points to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif, in 2010, was on the defensive about her record as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, where she oversaw a...

“Let me assure you, if the revenue environment weakens or interest-rate structures don’t move up, and the economy slows down, we’ll have to take out more costs,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said on Thursday at the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference. And that would mean more job cuts.BofA is famous for whittling down its headcount in recent years. In Moynihan’s 25-slide presentation, there was this chart that shows just how skillfully he has trimmed down his workforce, chopping it by 25% overall since the second quarter of 2011:Wolf Street So if, as he said, “interest-rate structures don’t move...

In a race to represent California in the U.S. Senate, Republican Carly Fiorina has emphasized her "real-world" business experience as chief executive officer of one of the world's largest tech companies. But Fiorina's controversial 6-year tenure as CEO of computer-maker Hewlett Packard has also been used by Democrats to attack her. The latest attack ad from the Sen. Barbara Boxer campaign picks up on a thread introduced in the primary -- accusing Fiorina of laying off tens of thousands of workers at HP, shipping jobs overseas and all the while padding her own bank account and toy box. Here's what...

Hewlett-Packard Co. is preparing to shed up to another 30,000 jobs as the Silicon Valley pioneer launches into a new era in the same cost-cutting mode that has marred much of its recent history. -snip- Things began to change at the outset of this century under former CEO Carly Fiorina, now a candidate for the Republican Party's nomination in the 2016 race for president. Fiorina engineered a $25 billion acquisition of PC maker Compaq that angered many shareholders, including heirs of the company's founders. She cut more than 30,000 jobs before she was fired a decade ago.

The Hewlett-Packard Company is no stranger to job cuts: During the Carly Fiorina era in the early aughts, the company’s workforce was slashed by 30,000. Fast forward to the Meg Whitman years and the company is still thinning itself out: following job cut announcements in 2014 that amounted to a 55,000-person reduction in headcount, the tech giant said Tuesday that it expects to lose another 30,000 jobs as a part of its planned transformation. In a meeting with analysts Tuesday, HP provided an updated look at its plans to split into two publicly traded companies – HP Inc, which will...

When Obama was speaking to environmentalist supporters in 2008 regarding his plans to address “climate change,” he candidly revealed, “Under my plan, electricity costs will necessarily skyrocket.” Obama’s White House Science Advisor John Holdren later elaborated, “We need to de-develop the United States to bring our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.” The so-called Clean Power Plan proposed by Obama’s EPA is well-designed to do precisely that -- de-develop the United States. A new study from the National Black Chamber of Commerce estimates the regulation will cause job losses reaching 7 million...

Deutsche Bank has witnessed an exodus of executives this year in what’s been a tough stretch for the German lender. Here’s a brief recap of the bank’s recent trials and travails for those who need a refresher: The bank, which has paid out more than $9 billion over the past three years alone to settle legacy litigation, has become something of a poster child for corrupt corporate culture. In April, Deutsche settled rate rigging charges with the DoJ for $2.5 billion (or about $25,474 per employee) and subsequently paid $55 million to the SEC (an agency that’s been run by...

After the Fed admitted over a year ago that the US unemployment rate (which in 2012 was supposed to be a rate hike "threshold" once it hit 6.5% and is now at 5.1%) has become irrelevant in a country where a record 94 million people have left the labor force, and with the Fed poised to hike rates even though US hourly wages have not only not increased for the past 7 years, but for the vast majority of the labor force continue to decline, some have asked - is there any labor-related chart that matters any more?The answer:...

<p>As a patriotic and proud citizen of the United States, I have a story to share that has not only impacted my family, hundreds of colleagues, but also current and future United States workers.</p> <p>As I watched the grim faced Disney Executive, it was obvious that bad news was going to be delivered. The dead silence was broken when the Disney Executive made a harsh announcement. All of you in this room will be losing your jobs in the next 90 days. Your last day of employment for this company will be January 30, 2015. Your jobs have been given over to a foreign workforce. In the meantime you will be training your replacements until your jobs are 100 percent transferred over to them and if you don’t cooperate you will not receive any severance pay. Also, if we don’t feel confident that we have captured everything that you do we can, at our discretion, keep you longer than the 90 days until we have captured everything that you do with this job. Don’t discuss this meeting with anybody else in the company. Everybody in the room was appalled at the message. I was completely silent thinking how this was going to affect my coworkers and how I was going to break the news to my wife and children back at home as I was the only person in my home with a steady job. How would I pay for all the expenses that go along with a home, a wife, and children?</p>