Fiorina Shouldn't Boast About Her Business Cred

Carly Fiorina is getting more attention as a serious candidate now, and she wants people to measure her by her accomplishments in the world of business. But at the New York Times, a business reporter who used to cover her thinks that might backfire. After all, she got fired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard after its stock cratered, and she was hired at H-P despite questions about her tenure as an executive at Lucent, writes Andrew Ross Sorkin. Fiorina has explanations at the ready—as in this essay where she depicts herself as a rebel who got fired for bucking the status quo. She is also quick to point out that H-P's revenue and growth expanded when she was CEO. Sorkin, however, suggests those figures are misleading because she doesn't mention profits.

"If you make enough acquisitions—especially one the size of Compaq—you can inflate your revenue figures," he writes, referring to H-P's misguided merger under Fiorina. "You can also buy growth." He calls Fiorina a "talented and thoughtful politician," but he's not sure how well her business resume is going to hold up under scrutiny. "As the campaign goes on," he concludes, Fiorina "will have difficulty arguing that her time as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard should be viewed as an asset, and not a liability." Click for his full column. (More Carly Fiorina 2016 stories.)