HP's boardroom witch hunt causes two directors to leave
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Pretexting now part of the HP Way Put the cheery comeback stories on hold. HP has a boardroom scandal that deserves some attention.â¦
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The boardroom clashes at Hewlett-Packard have advisers talking: Should what happens in the boardroom stay in the boardroom?
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By Ellen Nakashima  and Yuki Noguchi, Washington Post Staff Writers  Hewlett-Packard Co. chairman Patricia C. Dunn resigned yesterday and was replaced by chief executive Mark V.
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Hewlett-Packard Co.'s board of directors yesterday called an emergency meeting for Sunday as a scandal involving spying on board members and journalists escalated and prompted Chairman Patricia C. Dunn to say she would step down if asked.
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Hewlett-Packard broke federal laws when it did not tell investors why a director had abruptly resigned during an inquiry into boardroom leaks last year.
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A board member resigned, according to sources, because the computer giant tried to squelch leaks to the press.
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By JORDAN ROBERTSON  SAN JOSE, Calif. - Hewlett-Packard Co. said today that Patricia Dunn will step down as chairwoman of the computer and printer maker in January amid a widening scandal involving a possibly illegal probe into media leaks. She will be succeeded by CEO Mark Hurd.
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(InfoWorld) - Another top Hewlett-Packard executive will leave the company, with HP's announcement on Thursday that its general counsel, Ann Baskins, has resigned, effective immediately. It is unclear how closely involved Baskins, who worked for HP for 24 years, was in theÂ internal investigation scandalÂ plaguing HP. The company is being investigated for potentially using illegally methods in its hunt to uncover an internal source leaking information to the press. HP's chairman of the board hasÂ already resignedÂ and other top executives including a senior counsel and the global security manager have left the company since the scandal erupted. Baskins is among many top officials at HP that a U.S. House of Representatives SubcommitteeÂ has subpoenaed, requiring them to testify as part of the committee's investigation Thursday.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard board of directors took no action at a special Sunday meeting and will reconvene late Monday to continueÂ discussions about the scandalÂ that has occupied the company over the past week. The board held a teleconference Sunday morning for several hours, according to a brief company statement issued Sunday afternoon, to discuss reports that outside investigators, acting on behalf of the board,Â obtained phone recordsÂ of directors and journalists to trace the source of information leaks regarding board meetings. The investigators' tactic of disguising their true identity in order to gain access to customer records, called "pretexting," may be in violation of the law and the California Attorney General's office is investigating the case. HP gave no reason in its statement for the move to adjourn Sunday's meeting to Monday. HP Board Chairman Patricia Dunn has been criticized for launching the investigation, including calls for her resignation. Dunn said she was "appalled" that the investigators engaged in pretexting but said that she was not told details of how they conducted their probe. While she has said that she won't resign on her own, she would step down if the board requested her to do so. The investigation determined that HP director George Keyworth was the source of a story CNet Networks Inc. story in January about HP's business strategy. When Keyworth was asked to resign from the board in May, he refused. But board member Thomas Perkins, a renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist, resigned in protest over the way in which the investigation was conducted. Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd, in a letter to company employees released late Friday, urged them to keep focused on their work. "The media coverage and speculation regarding the recent actions of the HP Board ... have nothing to do with the strategy or operations of Hewlett-Packard," he said. Hurd, who emphasized that he was speaking as CEO and not as a board member, added: "There has been a long history of leaking company information with the HP board that clearly needs to be resolved."
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HP's general counsel has resigned immediately from the company, the fourth to do so behind former chairwoman Patricia Dunn and two other HP execs. Additionally, she will not testify in Congressional hearings.
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Promises not to do it again HP has settled allegations over its failure to disclose why one of its directors resigned in the midst of last year's boardroom mole fiasco.â¦
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PALO ALTO, California  - Hewlett-Packard Co.   Chairman Patricia Dunn resigned as a director on Friday as the   embattled computer maker unveiled new details of the boardroom   leak probe, including the role of chief executive Mark Hurd.
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Several key executives in that group were fired during the quarter following a botched order-processing system migration. HP CEO Carly Fiorina said the problems with the system have been resolved.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Hewlett-Packard Co.'s board of directors adjourned an emergency phone conference yesterday without announcing a decision on the fate of embattled chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who is facing calls to resign or be fired for ordering an investigation that may have used illegal means to spy on colleagues and journalists.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co.'s board of directors has leapt out of the mainstream with the recently disclosed scandal that's set members against each other, but changes over the past several years have made conflict on boards more likely. Boards have evolved from clubby groups of company executives and tight partners to more independent bodies, management experts said Friday. HP's messy fight, in which investigators hired by the board used possibly illegal techniques to uncover apparent leaks of confidential information by some directors, is a spectacle unto itself, they said. But directors are now more likely to call companies to account. "Boards have changed very dramatically in the last 20 years, and especially in the last 4 years," said Nell Minow, editor at The Corporate Library, a research company in Portland, Maine, that specializes in corporate governance. "There isn't a board in America that isn't much more active, much more vital, much more independent." Many boards used to be heavily laden with investment bankers and lawyers who worked for the company, and often had four or five company executives, said Harvard Business School professor Joseph Bower. That hasn't been true since at least the 1980s, as the percentage of independent members grew, he said. "I think boards are much more diligent ... than they were 15 to 20 years ago," said David Larcker, a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. "In the process, there are controversies that didn't crop up back then." The probe of HP's board, though embarrassing, was probably necessary, The Corporate Library's Minow said. "They have not been a functional board," Minow said, criticizing the handling of former Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina's hiring and dismissal. Some of the leaks from the HP board involved discussions about Fiorina. It's hard for boards to work if there are leaks and directors don't trust each other, Minow said. Yet to find out who was leaking information, they unfortunately had to give the investigators a lot of independence. "I think they made the best of a very bad situation." The trend toward truly independent boards has accelerated with recent scandals and stepped-up regulation, Minow said. A key factor was out-of-court settlements of suits against Enron and WorldCom in recent years, in which directors who weren't involved in wrongdoing accepted some liability. "Those settlements shivered the timbers of every director in America," Minow said. Also in the past few years, companies that sell "director and officer" liability insurance have raised premiums on companies they thought didn't have enough oversight to prevent Enron-style legal meltdowns. In addition, the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations made boards more diligent by forcing companies to ensure proper oversight of accounting, cybersecurity and other issues, she said. However read, a drama like HP's is not unprecedented, according to Harvard's Bower. About 20 years ago, there was a succession battle at American Express that included leaks to the media, he said. He sees the latest board fight as another aberrant event rather than an outcome of boards becoming more independent. "Every once in a while, there are battles and people disagree strongly. And when people disagree strongly, sometimes they do silly things," Bower said.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co. said Tuesday that Patricia Dunn will step down as chairwoman of the computer and printer maker in January amid a widening scandal involving a possibly illegal probe into media leaks. She will be succeeded by CEO Mark Hurd.
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Almost as quickly as Carly Fiorina's tenure as chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of the board at Hewlett-Packard (HP) came to an end, the speculation began about who may be plucked to replace her. The company announced Wednesday that the board has begun an "immediate" search for a replacement, and although Fiorina was the first CEO in HP's history to be selected from outside of the company, her replacement will probably be the second.