Compaq-HP Merger Was Right After All, According to Stanford Business School Research.

AScribe Business & Economics News Service, July, 2007

Byline: Stanford Graduate School of Business

STANFORD, Calif., July 16 (AScribe Newswire) -- In 2001, when Hewlett-Packard's then-CEO Carly Fiorina announced that the technology giant proposed to merge with Compaq Computer Corp., she set off a firestorm of controversy. Michael Dell, CEO of rival Dell Computer, famously called it "the dumbest deal of the decade," and Walter Hewlett, the son of one of the company's founders, mounted an aggressive proxy fight to prevent the corporate marriage from being consummated. Stockholders as well as the media were fiercely divided on the wisdom of the move.

Not any longer. Six years later, after Fiorina's acrimonious 2005 departure - which many attributed largely to the merger - and the promotion of former NCR...