Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ)’s Chairman Ralph Whitworth resigned and the stock of the company dipped as soon as the announcement came out.
David Faber and Jim Cramer of CNBC were discussing this recently and they spoke in details about the exit and the reasons. Faber said that Whitworth was resigning due to health issues and he is also stepping down temporarily from the “large activist fund” which he founded and he has run so far.
“He has left, has resigned from that world due to health issues, is also stepping down for now atleast temporarily, on hopes from relational, the large activist fund which he founded and which he has run”
Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ)’s board is going to discuss about the new chairman soon in the next board meeting. They might consider Raymond Lane who stepped down early 2013 before Whitworth became the chairman.
Whitworth was part of different executive boards of the company and became interim chairman in early 2013. Cramer and Faber were discussing about the so called “Activist fund” and compared him with Carl Icahn. Faber said that this move by Whitworth to step down as Chairman of Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) might have been due to recurrence of cancer.
“A well-known activist fund with a long track record of some success in terms of getting a lot of companies do various things that it wanted them to do.” Faber said about the Activist fund founded by Whitworth.
He also mentioned about the Timken Company split and how the activist fund of Whitworth played a key role in it. The key investors in Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) are Relational Investors and Pzena Investment Management with over 27 million shares in the company. Relational Investors is Whitworth’s company and it has played major roles in various companies in a lot of critical decisions and Timken is one among them.
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