The hiring of Fiorina is a good marker when HP started to go downhill, and the 2008 recession was like the climax of this somewhat tragic story.
When Bill and Dave were finally out of the company there was a stark 180 in philosophy. You can always tell when management is about to do something sleezy in any of the HP spin offs (including HP) because they invoke the founder's to justify their obviously poor decisions.
"I really think this is what Bill and Dave would have done"
Was it really better for share price? Not short term, but long term. HP was very respected before, not so much latter.
If your current investors want to pump the stocks up before using the pump to offload them into pension plans and the like, it makes sense.
Exactly! Short-term tactics are good for loot-and-plunder leadership, seldom for the business. And the market tends to be disproportionately interested in short term gains, so things can be antagonistically stacked against the business as an organization. After all, short-term is where the best combination of margins and flexibility lie.