Carly Fiorina's troubling telecom past
From 2010...still a good read...and it's from Fortune, so hardly a leftist plot to get her...before she almost ruined HP, she ruined Lucent
http://fortune.com/2010/10/15/carly-fiorinas-troubling-telecom-past/
In the spring of 1999, Lucent Technology's star executive Carly Fiorina pulled off yet another coup—or so it appeared. A tiny start-up called PathNet agreed to buy huge amounts of fiber-optic gear from Lucent, a deal worth at least $440 million and potentially as much as $2.1 billion. The agreement Fiorina negotiated “potentially represents the single largest fiber supply agreement to a network operator in the U.S,” according to a triumphant press release.
While it was unclear how a tiny company like PathNet, with barely 100 employees and all of $1.6 million in annual revenue, could swing such as massive purchase, Wall Street didn’t seem to care about such details. The day following the announcement Lucent’s stock jumped 3%.
As she tells it on the campaign trail, Fiorina’s life story is an inspiring tale full of such achievements. From an unlikely start as a secretary she raced up the corporate ladder to record heights, becoming the first female to run a Fortune 20 company, Hewlett Packard (HPQ-0.44%). Now, after battling cancer, she’s running to oust Barbara Boxer (D., Calif) from the U.S. Senate.
Yet Fiorina’s campaign biography quickly skates over the stint that made her a star: her three-year run as a top executive at Lucent Technologies. That seems puzzling, since unlike her decidedly mixed record at HP, Fiorina’s tenure at Lucent has all the outward trappings of success.
