Carly Fiorina Resigns

Hewlitt-Packard’s CEO resigned yesterday after pressure from her board. Oddly enough, Forbes writes that there’s a Davos angle here as well:

Fiorina probably could have bought time by following the board’s suggestion of some months’ back to name a chief operations officer, but insiders say she never wanted to give up the detail work. Problem was, she didn’t want to give up the visionary stuff either, and so was flying to Davos to opine on global economics when, back home, fundamental decisions needed to be made about, say, the PC business.

She lost the trust of Wall Street by disappointing on too many quarterly results and being unpredictable. She lost the trust of the board by not giving her lieutenants clear enough authority or instructions. In the face of criticisms from both sides, and Fiorina unwilling to change, the board moved on her.

Forbes says that she’ll be “at least temporarily replaced by the oldest of HP’s old guard. Interim Chairman Patricia Dunn joined HP in 1998, before Fiorina showed up”.