2012 was full of stock-crushing news for HP, from layoffs to writedowns to its strange mess with Autonomy.
A new, in-depth story in Businessweek documents all the missteps that sent the company's shares down 70 percent since August 2010, erasing $68 billion in shareholder equity.
But, as Businessweek reporters Ashlee Vance and Aaron Ricadela point out, the company didn't get here in one year. And amid all the errors and missteps, there have been some bright spots—good decisions and fundamental strengths that give hope for a turnaround.
Wrong: HP hasn't grown its own leaders
Current CEO Meg Whitman is HP’s fourth chief executive in two and a half years. All but Cathie Lesjak, the CFO who filled in as interim CEO, have come from outside the company.
They are Carly Fiorina, from Lucent; Mark Hurd, from NCR; Léo Apotheker, who had been fired from SAP; and Meg Whitman, from eBay and a failed bid to get elected governor of California.
HP's current executive chairman, Ray Lane, is also an outsider. He worked at Oracle for most of his career, then VC firm Kleiner Perkins.
Right: HP promises its next CEO will come from HP
If HP's implosion doesn't force her out, Meg Whitman has promised to stay on for at least five years.
HP's board has promised that Whitman's successor would be promoted from within. This is something longtime HP supporters wanted to hear.
Top contenders today include chief strategy officer Bill Veghte; David Donatelli, head of HP's Enterprise Business; and Todd Bradley, who runs the PC-and-printer business.
Wrong: Ditching HP's culture
Most long-term HP employees will tell you that HP's problems began with Carly Fiorina and her attempt to ditch HP's stodgy but hardworking and open culture.
She bought airplanes and put barbed wire around the executive parking lot. She won a contentious battle with shareholders to push through an acquisition of Compaq, which split HP's culture and "set it on the path toward becoming a slave to the supply chain rather than a company obsessed with invention," Businessweek's reporters write.
And it was during Fiorina's tenure that boardroom leaks to reporters became a massive scandal that showed how dysfunctional HP's leadership had become.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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