Five outsiders who could lead Hewlett-Packard

Having gone through a rash of CEOs in the past 10 to 15 years, Hewlett-Packard may soon find itself looking for yet another new chief, despite just tapping Meg Whitman for that job this week.

HP's announcement Thursday that board member Whitman would replace Leo Apotheker came under fire from some observers who believe that the company should have named an interim leader and conducted an executive search.

"We would view any decision not to conduct a comprehensive search of internal and external candidates for a permanent CEO role as unsatisfactory and unnecessarily hasty," analyst firm Sanford Bernstein wrote in a research note this week before Whitman was named. "We also believe that shareholder reaction to Whitman as a permanent CEO would be mixed." Read more...