Free Republic

Carly Fiorina may come from the executive suite, but that hasn’t stopped other executives from slamming her record. The latest critique comes from Steven Rattner, a former Wall Street banker and private equity executive. Rattner, in an opinion piece in the New York Times on Saturday, called Fiorina’s time as the CEO of HP “short and disastrous.” Rattner said HP’s acquisition of Compaq, pushed through by Fiorina, caused an amount of divisiveness at the company that Rattner says he never saw in his 33-year career on Wall Street. He said that while Fiorina did serve during a tough period for...

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,...

A comparison of the tenures is a battle of bad vs. worse. It’s well known by now that GOP presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina has never held political office and is running on her business record. As many commentators have pointed out, that’s a dicey proposition since her highest-profile job as CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005 was sort of a disaster.But in an interview with Fortune contributor and Yale School of Management professor Jeffery Sonnenfeld, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump—who has made a habit of criticizing Fiorina—took aim at a different stage of her career.When asked about what he thought...

Stardate 20021005.2128 (On Screen): As I think many of my readers know, I used to work for Qualcomm designing cell phones. Qualcomm is the company which invented CDMA, and made it practical, and made it into a market success, and it now dominates the American market, where Verizon and Sprint both use it. There are two other nationwide cellular systems: AT&T currently uses IS-136 TDMA, which is obsolete and has no upgrade path. Cingular uses GSM, a more sophisticated form of TDMA from Europe. And right now I'm basking in the evil glow of a major case of schadenfreude. The...

Inside Iraqi Corruption Charles R. Smith Tuesday, March 29, 2005 John A. Shaw is a curious example of Washington politics gone mad. Shaw is a veteran government employee who served inside the White House under Presidents Ford, Nixon and Reagan and was an associate deputy secretary in the Department of Commerce. In 2001, Shaw was appointed by Bush Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld to head the newly formed Office of International Technology Security. In this post, Shaw began the difficult task of reforming government controls over the export of sensitive technology to foreign countries. In 2003, Shaw began investigating allegations of...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has disclosed that she holds stock valued at up to $15,000 in Alcatel-Lucent (formerly Alcatel SA), a company with extensive investments in Iran and Sudan — nations that sponsor terrorism. The disclosure of Pelosi’s holdings comes at the same time that legislation is making its way through the California legislature barring state pension fund managers from investing in companies, like Alcatel-Lucent, that do business with "terror-friendly" nations. U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) arrives to speak at the 2007 "Take Back America" conference in Washington June 20, 2007. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES) According...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. federal jury found that Microsoft Corp infringed on audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and should pay $1.52 billion in damages, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. The report said that Alcatel-Lucent had accused the world's biggest software maker of infringing on patents related to standards used for playing computer music files.

Although a French company soon will own the famed Bell Labs, the U.S. will exercise "unprecedented" control over sensitive government projects at the New Jersey facility, U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1st Dist.) said yesterday. "The U.S. government will be able to veto any people who have direct control over Bell Labs, and can veto the removal of any persons who have control over Bell Labs," said Andrews, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and was briefed last week on the pending takeover of Lucent Technologies by Alcatel of France. His approval hinges on both companies following through on...

PARIS (AFP) - Shareholders in French telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel and US group Lucent approved a merger of the two companies to create a giant valued at 21.5 billion euros (27 billion dollars). The backing came during special general assemblies held by Lucent shareholders in Wilmington, Delaware and Alcatel shareholders in Paris. Lucent Technologies chairwoman and chief executive, Patricia Russo, who is to be chief executive in the combined entity, said the merger would create a strong global player. "As we have said from the start, the primary driver of this combination is to create long-term value for shareowners, customers,...

Millions of American investors, as well as their pension funds, mutual funds and other institutions, have unsuspectingly invested their hard-earned wealth in foreign companies that aid and abet the Islamofascist theocracy in Iran. If you are reading this article, you’re probably one of those unsuspecting investors. You may not directly own shares of corporations that do business in and with the Islamic Republic of Iran, but chances are your 401K, mutual fund portfolio or public pension system is invested in such companies. Congratulations. A portion of your money is going toward arming and training Hezbollah terrorists, sheltering members of Al...

Lockheed Martin Corp. won a $168 million contract from the Vietnamese government to build and launch the country's first telecommunications satellite, state media reported on Friday. The U.S. firm, which beat Alcatel of France and Japan's Sumitomo Corp. in a tender this week, is scheduled to sign the contract with the state-run Vietnam Posts and Telecommunication Corp on Friday, the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported. The government has ordered the satellite to be launched on May 23, 2008, three years later than originally planned following extended negotiations on orbital slots. Industry experts said the satellite, named Vinasat, would help Vietnam save...

I posted recently about the recent loss of one of America's premier telecom infrastructure companies to the French - the Alcatel/Lucent merger. Not only is this merger harmful to our economy and American jobs, but it poses a national security risk. France is no friend of America and borders on being a threat to this country. This merger poses a risk that is just as great as the recent attempt to sell port operations to the Arab Emirates. Lucent has a Bell Labs division that does super sensitive work for our government and military. To placate concerns over American secret...

The recent announcement of the merger of Lucent and Alcatel, two telecommunications titans, has been heralded in financial circles as a positive development. However, there is a little-known aspect of Alcatel's business that should make Americans uncomfortable with this new arrangement. Alcatel does a considerable amount of business with countries on our State Department's list of terrorist-sponsoring nations, including Iran and Sudan. Worst of all, the services and products that Alcatel provides to Iran can, at least indirectly, help that nation's military capability. Among its activities in Iran that have relevance to Tehran's military and terrorism-related activities are contracts signed...

WATERVILLE -- Mainers should push the Maine State Retirement System to divest $50 million of its investments in international companies operating in war-torn Sudan, a group of activists said Friday. A bill currently in the Statehouse to force the divestment, L.D. 1758, hangs in the balance, said Wells Staley-Mays, an adviser to the Fur Cultural Revival. He was speaking at a Colby College event alongside three Sudanese refugees. "Fur" refers to a major non-Arab tribe in the Sudanese region of Darfur -- an area the size of Texas, whose name literally means "home of the Furs" -- now threatened with...

The new secretary general of the Organization of American States resigned yesterday because of accusations that he took a bribe in 2001 while president of Costa Rica. In a letter to the 34-nation organization, Miguel Angel Rodriguez denied he did anything wrong. "With humility, pain and anguish, I ask you and your countries for forgiveness for making you endure this difficult period," Rodriguez said in his letter, which was read to OAS members here yesterday by Costa Rica's ambassador to the OAS, Luis Guardia. Rodriguez wrote that he was leaving because he did not want to expose the OAS to...

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - In a major embarrassment for the premier political institution of the Americas, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, Miguel Angel Rodriguez, resigned Friday, pressed by a corruption scandal in his native Costa Rica and just weeks after assuming his post. In his resignation letter, Rodriguez said he didn't want to submit his family to the costs of a "long-distance defense" and wished to spare the OAS "a cruel and lengthy persecution of its Secretary General, not only in the judicial sphere but also in the media." "With humility, pain and anguish, I ask...

France has been accused of agreeing to a crackdown on exiled opponents of Iran in return for lucrative commercial contracts. Lawyers for France's human rights league, speaking on the anniversary of a huge police raid on the National Council of Resistance of Iran near Paris, pointed out "troubling coincidences" in the timing of the operation and a series of deals with Teheran. In March last year, the regime signed a large contract with the French telecommunications group Alcatel for a telephone network. In April last year Teheran offered the petrol giant TotalFina a £660 million gas fields contract. At the...

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movment in Iran from being reported. From jamming satellite broadcasts, to prohibiting news reporters from covering any demonstrations to shutting down all cell phones and even hiring foreign security to control the population, the regime is doing everything in its power to keep the popular movement from expressing its demand for an end of the regime. These efforts by the regime, while successful in the short term, do not resolve the fundamental reasons why this regime is crumbling from within. Iran is a country ready for a regime...

I have discovered that the US government and some state and local governments are doing business with Alcatel, a french telecommunications company. These deals seem to be done through government contractors. Go visit their site at www.alcatel.com and search around for terms like government and Navy and see the press releases.... Then.... Call your congressmen/congresswoman and scream bloody murder that US tax dollars are going to French companies when they could just as easily go to a US company. Ask them to explain why ANYTHING Naval is being allowed to go to a French company when American soldiers are fighting...

Martin Luther King Jr.'s image has been used to protest a potential war on Iraq, denounce a gay rights law and sell wireless phone service. The trouble, of course, is that the civil rights leader "is not here to speak for himself," said the Rev. Richard Bennett, executive director of the African American Council of Christian Clergy in Miami. On the eve of the holiday commemorating King's birth, some scholars and civil rights leaders say that while it's not much of a stretch to assert that King would have opposed war with Iraq -- he was an advocate of nonviolence...