back to article HP accuses Hurd of repeated lying

HP's chairman Ray Lane has accused Mark Hurd of repeatedly lying to the board of directors in an angry letter to the New York Times. Lane was writing in response to an opinion piece in the paper which suggested HP's new boss, Léo Apotheker, formerly boss of SAP, was guilty of worse misbehaviour than Hurd. The article said …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Code Monkey

    Oh dear

    Is hooting and wailing in the press about lying execs really going to do wonders for that share price?

    I'm no IT exec, maybe it is...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      "I did not have sex with that woman"

      Last time I checked a BJ was not sex Mr. President.

      I'll smoke a cigar to that!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Then why was he paid millions to go?

    It's all very well the Board (or at least this guy) ranting about Hurd's behaviour and lies now but why did they not work to block Hurd's giant payoff when they booted him?

    I understand that these CEOs have contracts which state they receive golden parachutes or platinum boots - but surely if misconduct is involved they lose such entitlement?

    It sickens me that the top are rewarded for failure and worse while the rest of us struggle to get paid for success.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      They paid him off...

      Simple - HP paid him to go quickly and quietly.

      He had an 'at will' contract and could have been 'terminated with cause' as they say in the US; if the Board had had the courage to do this he would not have been entitled to any payment. However they were concerned about Hurd taking legal action and HP's good (ha!) name being dragged through the courts.

      So they paid him off...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        From what I heard...

        He gave a lot of it back in agreement for dropping the nondisclosure (or whatever it was) lawsuit against Oracle. The rest, I believe, was cashing out options he had already accrued (i.e. not part of his severance package).

        In more general terms, if they would have pursued a termination with clause, there would have been a long drawn out legal battle over what was owed. I helped do discovery for a similar lawsuit one time, the Cxx in question sued and, AFAIK, won his bonus for the year he was terminated.

  3. JaitcH
    FAIL

    "He violated numerous elements of HP’s Standards of Business Conduct": Pot calls Kettle black

    The whole sorry episode only demonstrates how ALL of HP's senior echelon's have abused the good name of HP.

    Seems like the Board of Directors owe it to their shareholders to resign, forthwith.

  4. Peter 39

    Authority and responsibility go hand-in-hand

    If the Board believe it was this bad then why did it take the sex-allegation investigation to uncover it? Surely overseeing the CEO one of the Board's main responsibilities.

    If the Board failed this badly then it too should resign. And most especially the Chairman.

    Either they're lying or they're incompetent. Both are cause for termination, eh?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    A Victory For The PC Brigade

    Fiorina was hired because HP was overly sensitive to that "women are disciminated in the workplace", "we must do something about it" thing.

    So they hired the wrong person simply because she was a woman. Fiorina failed.

    Hurd was a great financial success for HP. He tried (!) to have an affair and didn't come clean. Like Mr Clinton, I would say. So the HP board PC brigade brought him down.

    A dramatic display of idiocy and lack of human judgement. When can they sweep away all those new-age hypocrites from HP and bring in a philanderer like that certain middleware tycoon we all know of ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Oh No...

      Fiorina was hired because she seemed to have (and actually did) real pizazz. She was good to talk to, and presented a very interesting face to the outside world used to the old HP. Unfortunately a face is not enough and if the board had looked a little more carefully at her real track record they might have decided otherwise.

      Hurd has been a great financial success - if you think that selling the family silver to ensure you meet your targets/bonuses is a success. What is more interesting is whether any of that success is maintained over the medium-long term. Many suspect not. Beyond that, HP's inability to maintain any confidence in many of its workers says it all really - short term gain for execs, long term ruin for shareholders, staff and communitires.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      that explains it..

      That explains Carly (and Obama, FWIW). PC is its own punishment. Now, explain the Apotheker hire.

  6. C-N
    Alien

    Wow

    Makes me wonder what the hell this is really about.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Theory

      Already-wealthy people playing silly ego games instead of getting down to the business of doing their jobs running companies?

      1. Tom 35

        Choices

        Give money to the engineers to develop new products, see returns in 3-5 years.

        Or fire the engineers and outsource everything to India/China and give my self a bonus.

        Choices, choices... what to do.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Isn't Ray Lane is ex-Oracle?

    So yeah, I can see this... chance to take a cheap potshot.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      That's right

      ...he's the new non-Exec Chairman (or something like that) that was announced with the new CEO.

      I'm sure he doesn't have any axes to grind :P

  8. Matthew Barker
    Unhappy

    Effigy battles

    So, they're saying that it's OK to hire one person with an ethically questionable record, because he's better than the person he replaces? Am I understanding this correctly?

    And to demonstrate how the new guy is ethically good-enough, they're still beating the previous one, who they hired and who they paid off when it was time to leave.

    And the board, along with the last two CEOs they hired, was involved with fraudulently obtaining phone records belonging to other board members, employees, and the press.

    They seem to be becoming worse rather than better.

    I don't think I want to give them any more business.

    [El Reg - Can you come up with an icon to symbolize HP's board of directors? Perhaps a bottle of sauce?]

  9. Smoking Man
    Unhappy

    Shame on me.

    I misread that sentence at 1st sight:

    "..The Board was unanimous in its decision that he must go, including the seven directors Mr Hurd recruited to the Board"."

    What I wanted to read was:

    "The seven directors Mr. Hurd recruited to the Board HAVE TO GO AS WELL, TOGETHER WITH HURD."

    Unfortunately it's not going to be that way. Would have made sense though.. We keep all those claqueurs who praised Hurd as their Great Leader. Sigh.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Integrity Integrity

    As everyone who's ever worked in Silicon Valley knows, the kingpins here have the utmost in Integrity. I'm shocked, just shocked by this behavior!

  11. Gil Grissum
    Grenade

    WTF???

    All this bitching and moaning at HP is making me want to jettison my Palm Pre Plus for an iPhone or perhaps a WP7 phone. ANything but a spec bumped Pre Plus Plus....

  12. D. Suse
    Paris Hilton

    So let me get this straight...

    So Hurd had sex with a porn star and ex-playboy bunnie, and grafted her a job to keep her handy as a sex-toy at shareholder's expense.

    So Hurd lied recently, and repeatedly during his employment at HP.

    So, what is the point here, role models? As far as I can see, most CEO's aren't SUPPOSED to be moral exemplars; CEO's are supposed to be ethically-impoverished, randomly-fornicating, morally-bankrupt, blood-thirsty, lying psychopathic corporate piranhas.

    Thus, I think Hurd actually fulfilled his HP CEO role-model-role quite well. But he sure could never work for Google.

    (Paris...because she should have applied to HP BEFORE Hurd got canned).

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Not much respect for Hurd

    I dont think that much of Hurd. He is a hatchet guy with nothing clever or subtle about his approach. I met him briefly before he was at HP and didnt think much of him then, my opinion hasnt changed. As another poster said, it will take a while before it becomes clear whether his "good work" at HP was any good in the long term. In all honesty I dont think Hurd could have taken HP anywhere further. You can only cut so much to increase profit.

    I do think however that the way he left was a bit silly. Think a slap on the wrist would have sufficed. Its just PC crap.

This topic is closed for new posts.