The Nation's Worst CEOs

Since Dorman, who was once a Bell-system wunderkind, has taken the reins, the value of AT&T shares has sunk about 60%. Before he took over, the stock had fallen about 60% in value in the previous three years. The stock's 5.8% dividend is a nice start on a return, but Dorman needs to find a way to grow the business -- not just cut expenses -- to keep capital losses from making the yield immaterial. Revenue has been down every year since 2000, and earnings-growth trends are negative.

Carly Fiorina

It's fashionable these days to suggest that Hewlett-Packard (HPQ Quote) CEO Carly Fiorina is a genius for improving results slightly in the past couple of quarters, but let's be frank: She's not. Not even close. Under her direction, a company that was once a paradigm of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship has simply failed to make any progress at enhancing shareholder value. It is now trading about where it did in 1995.

Fiorina's reign at H-P -- combined with that of the CEO just before her -- makes a great case study of exactly what not to do. They transformed a company that was fantastic at doing one thing (printers) into a company that is increasingly marginalized at that one thing and truly lousy at everything else. The stubborn, ill-conceived purchase of fading, unprofitable computer giant Compaq, has utterly failed to deliver on its promise of making shareholders richer with a soup-to-nuts strategy. The printer business still brings in the majority of the entire entity's earnings.

And yet because Fiorina decided to pick a fight with Dell (DELL Quote) in the PC business, Dell has turned the tables and made a strategic decision to return the favor. Dell has steadily released a very nice suite of new low-cost devices made by a variety of partners. Making matters worse, it has slashed prices on ink -- the most profitable part of the printer trade.