HP board meets to decide CEO's fate

Hewlett-Packard's (NYSE: HPQ) board met today to discuss what has quickly become the worst kept secret in the business world: the fate of CEO Leo Apotheker. So far, no word on its decision.

Apotheker

After only 11 months at the helm of the company, pundits say Apotheker's head is likely to be the latest HP CEO's served up, the sixth chief exec to bite the dust since 1999.

Next in line? Conventional wisdom is that former eBay CEO and current HP board member Meg Whitman is ready to step up to the abyss, uh, plate.

But, some critics say the board itself is as much as fault as is Apotheker. While he has been roundly criticized as ineffective, the board is taking hits for, among other things, the way it handled HPs previous scandal, ousted CEO Mark Hurd, and for a lack of direction. The board, after all, just last month cheered Apotheker's decision to spinoff its PC business and re-imagine the company.

Wall Street, meanwhile, seems just as confused, relentlessly driving the stock price down in recent week, then backing up as rumors of Apotheker's fate surfaced.

As Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a note to clients last week, "Investor exasperation with the company is the highest we have seen in 13 years following the sector." Much of that animus, Sacconaghi said, was the result of Apotheker's $10 billion bid for Autonomy, a deal the company may not be able to back out of, no matter who's at the helm.

For more:
- see this AllThingD article
- see this Wall Street Journal article
- see this MarketWatch article

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