Fiorina plans to launch her presidential campaign on May 4 in an online announcement that dispenses with the more traditional White House runs at the Presidency.
Mrs. Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, will formally declare her Republican campaign online and hold a conference call for US and International media.
US Media are saying that one of Fiorina’s biggest challenges may be raising the money she’ll need to stay in the race long enough to build up more name recognition.
She contributed $5 million of her own money to her Senate campaign, but left behind more than $500,000 of debt.
During her time at HP the Company struggled in both the printer and PC markets, a major initiative under her tenure was a marketing campaign launched at Comdex called “We Invent”.
The only problem was that everything that Fiorina claimed had been invented was in the past with the US Company failing to deliver on new inventions that would drive growth.
Fiorina started at HP in January 1999, on the day that she was appointed I did an interview with her sitting next to Steve Baller from Microsoft.
Fiorina took over HP at the height – or perhaps the beginning of the decline – of the tech boom.
She was also responsible for HP Compaq Computer, despite the objections of the son of company co-founder William Hewlett and many other stockholders.
Fiorina was accused of straying from the “HP Way.” She was not a perfect fit for the old engineering types at HP.
Lately, HP has been under fire for lacklustre revenues and failed strategies.
When the Compaq merger was being debated and shortly after it was tumultuously approved by just a slight majority of stockholders, Fiorina was seen by many as a disruptive force, bent on turning two viable companies an unwieldy monster.
At the several observers said that the acquisition would be bad for employees, bad for retailers (who would have fewer competing products to carry), bad for consumers and, ultimately, bad for stockholders.
The critics were right with HP delivering quarter after quarter declines, similar to what is still happening today.
Changes that Fiorina made didn’t turn out so well for the thousands of Hewlett Packard and Compaq employees that were laid off and the millions of HP stockholders who lost equity since she took over.
HP stock is worth less today than it was in 1999.
Fiorina is back in New Hampshire this week, joining a multitude of potential GOP presidential candidates at a two-day forum that could be an early test of who has breakout potential in the state that holds the nation’s first primary.
Fiorina says she doesn’t want to run based on her sex, but rather to focus on another factor that makes her an outlier in the Republican field: the fact that nearly her entire career has been in business, not the political arena. She was one of the country’s highest-ranking female executives during her nearly six years as chief executive at Hewlett-Packard, but was forced out of the company in 2005.
Fiorina ran for the U.S. Senate in California in 2010 but was easily defeated by incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer. She was an adviser to Sen. John McCain’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign.
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