Newsflash: Fiorina Ousted from HP

   Controversial HP CEO Carly Fiorina has been ousted by the company's board of directors and will leave HP immediately. Carly spearheaded HP's disastrous mega-merger with Compaq and grabbed 15 minutes of fame last year by signing a painfully one-sided deal with Apple Computer to license that company's iPod MP3 player. 
  
"While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision," Fiorina wrote in a statement issued this morning. "HP is a great company and I wish all the people of HP much success in the future." The differences she refers to are likely related to discussions within the company about a possible corporate split along two or three product lines. Fiorina has publicly said in the past that the company had seriously considered splitting up HP on three separate occasions but had ultimately decided against it.
  
Fiorina's troubles at HP came to a head earlier this year when the company admitted that it would be unable to sustain a financially devastating market-share battle with Dell. After trying for 2 years to wrest the largest-PC-maker crown from Dell, HP finally announced that it would instead seek to make its PC business smaller but more profitable.
  
HP has named chief financial officer (CFO) Robert Wayman as interim CEO while the company looks for a full-time replacement. Wayman will retain his CFO title during this period.