A Different Time, A Different Answer: Carly Fiorina

Here's what she said in a VARBusiness interview:

"Well, I'm going to take issue with your premise [that large high-tech mergers don't work. If you look at successful mergers, and there have been some, Citigroup and Enron are two where we think there are a couple of common principles. One, do your homework. That is, know what value you're trying to capture and how you're going to go capture it. You have to do your homework around where value is going to be created for customers and for share owners. Secondly, you have to manage an integration very programmatically and in a very disciplined way. Third, you've got to move fast,you have to be decisive.

"The reason I said I was going to argue with your premise a little bit is because the quick tag line is, 'Well, gee, the Compaq acquisition of DEC was a failure.' And I think if you look at the facts, that is not the case. Clearly, the integration effort took longer than it should have until Michael [Capellas arrived."

Here's what she said in a CNBC interview:

"Most [large high-tech mergers don't work! Most of them were done in hot markets at hot prices, which means you have to have lots of revenue synergies to make the case. Many of them were hostile; many of them acquired lots of debt on their balance sheets; many of them resulted in something less than market leadership; and many of them were mergers of diversification and not consolidation. This merger is about consolidation, which means we are in the same businesses and the same markets. We understand each other well. This is a deal that was not done in a hot market at a hot price. We have a wonderful value, we think. We have a $7 billion professional services business, the No. 1 storage business in the world and the No. 1 NT business in the world."++