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    HP Shares Tank as Meg Whitman Takes the Helm

    By Ben Parr | Mashable – Fri, Sep 23, 2011

    Shares of Hewlett-Packard are taking a beating Friday as investors express skepticism that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman can right the ship.

    HP's stock price closed at 22.86 on Thursday, just before Whitman was appointed as the company's new CEO. Shares of HP were trading at 21.96 as of 11:02 a.m. ET though, a drop of more than 3.5% (the stock is slowly recovering). It's even worse if you consider that HP's stock price hit 24.90 on Wednesday, not long after the news leaked that Leo Apotheker was out as CEO.

    [More from Mashable: Meg Whitman’s First Email to HP Employees]

    The problem is simple: Investors are not keen on the company's decision to put a person with mostly consumer experience in charge of a business whose strength is in enterprise. Whitman, who most believe did a good job building eBay into a powerhouse business, just doesn't have experience in hardware and enterprise sales. Investors wonder whether Whitman has the knowledge needed to fix the problems at the massive HP empire (which employs 300,000 people).

    SEE ALSO: Meg Whitman’s First Email to HP Employees

    [More from Mashable: Meg Whitman May Become HP’s Next CEO Today [REPORT]]

    Mashable's readers seem to agree with this assessment. In a recent poll where we asked readers what they think Whitman should do first, 42.5% of respondents said that she should revive the TouchPad and the webOS division. Another 25% said that she should save the PC division, while another 16% said that she should kill the $11 billion acquisition of British software maker Autonomy.

    Despite Whitman's statement that she intends to "stay the course" set by her predecessor, you can bet that she and new Executive Chairman Ray Lane (a partner at Kleiner Perkins and the former COO of Oracle) are reviewing all of their options with haste. If they don’t quickly communicate a vision for the company, employees and investors could panic, and who knows what would happen next.

    This story originally published on Mashable here.

     

    1 comment

    • Tia
      Tia  •  8 mths ago
      Ray Lane should have fired himself too. Instead he promoted himself to "executive" chair.

      That's HP. You screw up small, you get transferred and a raise. You screw up big, you get promoted and a raise and more stock options
     Post a comment
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