The vote is expected to be extremely close. Most of the company's 100 largest shareholders have talked to Fiorina and Hewlett in person. Steven Pigott is a director at one of them, the Citadel Investment Group, an investment firm in Chicago with US$7 billion in assets. Pigott, who called Citadel's Hewlett-Packard holding "sizable," tended to agree with Hewlett that the deal looks like a risky bet. He is leaning against the deal, he said.
But, he added, Fiorina is "just great" at presenting her case, and the "HP team can answer a lot more questions than Walter can."
Hewlett-Packard has gained ground recently, Pigott said last week. Among his institutional investor peers, Pigott senses what he terms the "NASCAR effect" -- a sporting curiosity, now whetted, to find out if Fiorina will succeed with the combined company or crash and burn. "It's an attitude of `All right, let's see what she can do,'" Pigott said.
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