Meet the Press host Chuck Todd quizzed 2016 GOP hopeful Carly Fiorina Sunday morning on her allegedly biggest asset — her business experience — by asking why she was fired from Hewlett-Packard in 2005, and moreover why HP’s stock went up 7% the day she left.
“I was fired in a boardroom brawl,” Fiorina said. “It is a leader’s job to challenge the status quo. When you do, you make enemies.”
“Every time there is a change with a company, the stock tends to go up,” she said. “The stock market is not a good arbiter of success over the long term. The average holding of stock today is less than 90 days. It is more a reflection of current emotion and conventional wisdom than anything else. And a CEO cannot run a company based on conventional wisdom or current emotion. A CEO’s job is to build sustainable value over the long term for as many employees, as many customers, and as many communities as possible.”
RELATED: Trollection 2016: Carly Fiorina Definitely Should Have Registered CarlyFiorina.org
As for that sustainable value over the long term for employees, Fiorina defended the 30,000 layoffs while she was there as a part of the tough economic times, and said many companies who laid off fewer went out of business altogether. “I had to make some tough calls in tough times,” she said, “tough times that many tech companies didn’t survive at all.”
Watch below, via NBC News:
[Image via screengrab]
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