The only way Carly Fiorina could have hoped to receive $21.4 million was to be ousted from her post as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co. . . .
    Let's start with the $14 million in cash that she was handed in accordance with Hewlett-Packard's formal severance pay policy. That was 2.5 times her salary and target bonus of last year.
    That sounds innocent enough; many companies offer a multiple of 3, not 2.5. Fiorina's target bonus -- the bonus that is hypothetically payable for achieving but not exceeding performance targets for a given year -- turns out to have been 300 percent of salary. In dollars, her target bonus for fiscal year 2004, which ended this past Oct. 31, was $4.2 million.
     For a target bonus, that's wildly high. Most companies' target bonuses are in the 100 percent to 125 percent of salary range. I examined bonuses paid for 2003 to 495 CEOs running U.S. companies with market caps of $3 billion or more. I found that in 46 cases a CEO earned an actual bonus -- not just a target bonus -- of 300 percent of salary or more. That's only 9 percent of the CEOs. . . .
     It's ironic that during her tenure, Fiorina didn't perform up to target. Her full-year bonuses for the fiscal years 2000 through 2004 ranged from 0 percent of salary in fiscal years 2001 to 293 percent of salary in fiscal 2002. But for the second half of fiscal 2002 and the first half of fiscal 2003, her target bonus was increased to 400 percent of salary from 300 percent in recognition of the heavy lifting she was doing with the Compaq merger. What a hoot. She never came close to earning the target bonus that she has now been paid 2.5 times over. . . .

Crystal goes on to detail a pay package which has to be read to be believed.  For example, the compensation committee of HP's board ignored its own criteria and awarded Fiorina an extra bonus of $567,000 during the company's fourth fiscal quarter ended October 31, 2004, just a few months before she was fired.

The line of applicants to become Fiorina's successor must be a mile long, no?