HP's Unearned Move to Make Meg Whitman Its Chairman

In any other company, the decision to give your chief executive the title of chairman might simply be a matter of debate. But Hewlett-Packard isn’t an average company.

The once-revered tech giant holds a special place in the annals of boardroom antics. In recent years its directors have approved some truly terrible deals, including the $11.1 billion acquisition of Autonomy that turned out to be worth 80 percent less. The board fired popular CEO Mark Hurd, giving him tens of millions in severance, and then hired a replacement, Léo Apotheker, that most of them hadn’t met, only to fire him 11 months later. Add in the bickering, the public accusations, the embarrassing leaks, and the even more embarrassing spying scandal, and it’s easy to see why several governance experts once dubbed HP’s board the worst in U.S. history.