Mercury News: Heir attack targets HP-Compaq deal. The family opposition also amounts to a vote of no-confidence in HP Chairman and Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, who has staked her career on the deal’s success.
Puzzling stuff.
Fiorina hadn’t lined up the support of the Hewlett and Packard families before announcing the deal to buy Compaq. This seems obvious, in retrospect, and it raises a competence question of some magnitude.
HP says it wasn’t surprised. Does this mean the company knew beforehand that the families would vote no? Why on earth did the deal proceed in this case?
Harvard Business School will get a case study out of this mess.