Ex-HP board member who voted to fire Fiorina endorses her [Tom Perkins]

The Hill ^ | 2015 August 27 | Jesse Byrnes

[CutePuppy]

A former board member of Hewlett-Packard who voted to fire Carly Fiorina as CEO is now endorsing the businesswoman's 2016 Republican presidential campaign.

"Carly did what she was brought in to do: turn the company around and make it successful again. Not only did she save the company from the dire straits it was in, she laid the foundation for HP's future growth," Tom Perkins wrote for a full-page New York Times ad.

The comments, in an advertisement placed in the newspaper's business section Thursday by a pro-Fiorina super-PAC, were framed as a response to an Aug. 18 Times column criticizing Fiorina's business record as "not so sterling."

"Critics often claim Carly was fired at HP because she was unsuccessful. As a member of the board, I can tell you this is not true. In truth, it was the Board I was a part of that was ineffective and dysfunctional," Perkins wrote. He added that his vote to fire her "was a mistake."

"The merger, while controversial, was unanimously approved by every member of the HP Board and won approval from shareholders. Thanks to Carly's leadership there was a path forward for this storied but troubled company," wrote Perkins, a founder of the California venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, in his ad.

Fiorina has repeatedly defended her rocky tenure as CEO of HP during her 2016 campaign.

She is currently tied for seventh in the 17-person GOP field with Ohio Gov. John Kasich in a national Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.

[CutePuppy]

Hopefully, this can put to bed the "Fiorina failed at HP" or "Fiorina destroyed a great company" silliness for good.

There are plenty of reasons to prefer some candidate[s] over others. You don't have to like Carly Fiorina as a candidate or you may have have a different favourite one — that's fine, but there is no reason to repeat the falsehoods about her excecutive record at Lucent and HP just because NYT or Fortune wrote snarky articles, full of omissions, distortions or ridiculous apples-to-oranges comparisons, or because the current favourite populist Donald Trump decided to attack her record: "She's a very nice woman, she got fired, she did a terrible job at Hewlett-Packard, she lost in a landslide — other than that, she's a very nice woman."

That's from a man whose own record at running Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc. / Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts has been absolutely dismal — common stock symbol DJT, which he completely controlled through the separate majority voting class of stock, so none of his money were in common share class that lost hundreds of millions of dollars for his shareholders, in addition to billions of dollars in lenders' debt, while he personally was getting millions of dollars from lending the use of his "successful celebrity" name, executive salary and preferred dividends : Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts / DJT stock chart between June 1995 and March 2005

Donald did what was good for Donald, not for his shareholders. Does this inspires trust? Here's what The Donald wrote in his book "Trump: Art of the Deal" about his public persona: "The final key to the way I promote," he wrote, "is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts."

Also read these posts to get familiar with the real record of Fiorina at Lucent and HP, without omissions, distortions or opinions pretenting to look like facts:

Carly Fiorina as a boss: The disappointing truth - FR, post #28, 2015 August 16

Carly Fiorina as a boss: The disappointing truth - FR, post #26, 2015 August 15

Carly Fiorina's Business Record: Not So Sterling - FR, posts #28, #30, 2015 August 18

[CutePuppy]

[This_far]

“Carly did what she was brought in to do: turn the company around and make it successful again.”

Barry’s spent or printed over a buncha trillions and the same can’t be said about him (well, not if you’re honest).

[DoughtyOne]

What slot does Fiornia fill that isn’t already taken.

Ted Cruz runs circles around her. She’s not who she is passing herself off as. She and Meg Whitman were McCain people.

Gack! What part of unqualified, Leftist, presidential wanna be, and outclassed by Cruz or Trump, fails to register with you folks?

As for her HP experience, her big claim was that she made a lot of enemies there and wasn’t very popular.

Seems like a life-long ambition being realized.

She’s not popular now either.

[bobby.223]

Her very positive comments regarding the savage 3rd. century death cult islam, (just weeks after 9/11), really got me charged up about her....

[DoughtyOne]

While Fiorina was there, the company lost half it’s value.

She left, and we’re supposed to swallow without chewing the idea that what she did was the reason the company flourished after she left.

The people that replaced her deserved no credit whatsoever. Only Fiorina does.

That’s the best her campaign could come up with?

Ouch.

[kvanbrunt2]

The comments, in an advertisement placed in the newspaper’s business section Thursday by a pro-Fiorina super-PAC, were framed as a response to an Aug. 18 Times column criticizing Fiorina’s business record as “not so sterling.”

“Critics often claim Carly was fired at HP because she was unsuccessful. As a member of the board, I can tell you this is not true. In truth, it was the Board I was a part of that was ineffective and dysfunctional,” Perkins wrote. He added that his vote to fire her “was a mistake.”

“The merger, while controversial, was unanimously approved by every member of the HP Board and won approval from shareholders. Thanks to Carly’s leadership there was a path forward for this storied but troubled company,” wrote Perkins, a founder of the California venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, in his ad.

Fiorina has repeatedly defended her rocky tenure as CEO of HP during her 2016 campaign.

this is close to my recollection at the time. i was actively trading at the time and paying attention to stuff. in case our model picked something that we could see was problematic. the model avoided HP at the time so it was not an issue.

[BlueNgold]

Has she renounced Cap and Trade yet?

You know, the same cap and trade she endorsed in her speech to the RNC in 2008?

Has she explained how she is going to run a better campaign than she did against Barbara, call me senator, Boxer?

[CutePuppy]

So if someone says that Christianity could never have been a part of Renaissance or any other positive humanistic or artistic or scientific endeavours, because there was The Inquisition and The Thirty Years War and "Galileo" and pedophile priests, we then condemn everything that is or was associated with Christianity?

Anyway, as I pointed out in first post, this was a very specific post about her business and executive experience. Let me try again:

There are plenty of reasons to prefer some candidate[s] over others. You don't have to like Carly Fiorina as a candidate or you may have have a different favourite one — that's fine, but there is no reason to repeat the falsehoods about her excecutive record at Lucent and HP...

[kvanbrunt2]

While Fiorina was there, the company lost half it’s value.

by what measure? cap rate? earnings? cash? sales? revenue? if stock valuation, what did the market do in general at the same time? just some questions on the “lost half it’s value” — which doesn’t happen in the stock market at all. i like her probably won’t vote for her unless she is the last man standing on the pub side.

from usa today which is worth crap
Fiorina did make the company larger in terms of revenue. The company’s total revenue jumped, largely due to massive acquisitions like Compaq.

and they took on debt. Stock price means nothing unless you need to raise capital via that market. which they didn’t need to do. all stock take hits and it is reflective of the market as a whole and to trader perceoptions. in most cases it is not relevant to the value of the company based on fundamentals. Which no one looks at anymore. It’s too much work. from the 1999 balance sheet
Financial Highlights
Unaudited
For the years ended October 31
In millions except per share amounts 1999 1998
Increase
Net revenue $42,370 $39,419 7%
Earnings from operations $ 3,688 $ 3,399 9%
Net earnings from continuing operations $ 3,104 $ 2,678 16%
Net earnings per share from continuing
operations–diluted: $ 2.97 $ 2.52 18%
Return on assets 9.8% 9.4%
Shares outstanding at year-end 1,005 1,015

[Reno89519]

This does NOT redeem Fiorina. Among other things, what about the around 25,000 Americans who lost their jobs by her actions?

[CPT Clay]

Dear CNN; Carly MUST Be in the next debate.

[rdcbn]

HP was seriously going down the tubes when Fiorina took over because it's business model and corporate culture had become obsolete as a dinosaur and was seriously dragging the company down as the direction and pace of technology passed it by.

Fiorina made meaningful and positive changes that were absolutely detested by the complacent, non productive and very self satisfied HP management and work force.

She was bringing HP into the 21st century when the dotcom boom busted.

At the time, every tech companies’s stock took massive hits as the bubble inflated tech stocks boom burst.

A lot of very good companies went under for good and HP might have went under for good if it were not for the changes Fiorina put in place.

[nickcarraway]

He didn't exactly have great things to say in his book, Valley Boy.

[Reno89519]

Agreed. There is no reason to support or even consider Fiorina as a candidate. No rewrite of her history changes anything. That she is a woman and attacking Clinton might give cat fight thrills to some people, others might cheer her as a woman, but these only cheapen her already damaged reputation and make her an affirmative action candidate. We’ve seen the result of that with Obama. Fiorina failed at Lucent and HP, she failed miserably in runs for office, she praised Islam after 9/11 instead of condemned it, and we can go on and on and on. Besides, she’s painful to watch and listen to.

[CutePuppy]

Q: You mean this (in 2008, having to support McCain's idiotic ideas, including his support for a "different" cap-and-trade"?)

Speaking at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Minn., she praised Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) cap-and-trade plan as something that would "both create jobs and lower the cost of energy":

I know John McCain. And in 2013, America will be more energy-independent because of his determination that we must power our own country, and his long-standing commitment to protecting our environment. John McCain will create a cap-and-trade system that will encourage the development of alternative energy sources. He will help advance clean coal technology, and nuclear power. And all of this will both create jobs and lower the cost of energy.

BTW, Sarah Palin and almost every Republican in 2008 had no choice but to support McCain and his "brilliant" ideas... He and Romney and almost all other Republican "leaders" have done a lot of damage. Has Trump flipped on cap-and-trade and single-payer health plan that "worked so well in Scotland and other places" just a few days ago? If you are looking for a "perfect" candidate you won't find it playing these games.

A: Yes, she did "renounce" Cap-and-Tax:

In a 2010 campaign ad, Fiorina attacked her Democratic opponent for claiming climate change is an important national security issue. "Terrorism kills," Fiorina says. "And Barbara Boxer's worried about the weather."

I don't think she explained how to beat Barbara Boxer or any other Democrat / Socialist in California (I don't know if anybody can "explain" how it could be done in 2010-2016), but I am pretty sure she can explain how to beat Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton and any other Democrat / Socialist in most of the 50 states... Is that good enough?

Anyway, the article was about continuing misperceptions of her record at HP.

[DoughtyOne]

Once again, a new management team was brought in.

Why?

Either she was cutting it or she wasn’t.

She wasn’t.

No person would ever be deemed to have been a bad CEO, if your model is realistic. A bad CEO is replaced, and the company turns around. Hence the moves the prior CEO made were vindicated.

This eliminates most CEOs from ever being held responsible.

I’m not buying it.

[CutePuppy]

You must not have read the links, or you would know the answer.

And thank God, that in public sector they never fire anyone — that's why it works so much better than the private sector when the evil greedy heartless CEOs fire people whose positions become redundant due to mergers, acquisitions or changing markets and competition... Or they do it to save money to create higher profits, or else Wall Street is not going to be happy and the Board of Directors is going to fire them, and then cut even more workers.

Was this a serious question?

[DoughtyOne]

Exactly. She comes up with this spin, but as far as I am concerned, that’s her most fertile act related to her being a CEO. Her former board members agree with me.

This dufus she pulled out of mothballs says he made a mistake.

I’m supposed to think he made one then, but couldn’t be making one now?

LOL. Seriously weak.

[Reno89519]

No, never. We do not need Carly.