6. Carly Fiorina: Merger with Compaq
HP was already plagued by its poor partnership with Intel for the development of Itanium and Fiorina accelerated HP’s downward spiral further by insisting to go ahead with the $25 billion dollar merger deal to acquire Compaq. Many major shareholders tried to prevent the merger as Compaq was deeply involved with low-margin segment, a market segment where IBM was already trying to abandon. Fiorina’s poor directions caused HP to loss 50 percent of its market capitalization, which triggered massive job losses. She stepped down in 2005.
