HP extends deadline for Mercury acquisition
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard has extended the deadline for Mercury Interactive shareholders to tender their shares in favor of the companies'Â proposed $4.5 billion merger. As of midnight Eastern time Thursday in the U.S., when the offer had been set to expire, 67.8 million shares had been tendered in favor of the deal, HP said. The deadline is now extended to midnight on Sept. 28. An HP spokeswoman in the U.K. couldn't immediately say how many shares are required to secure the deal. HP announced in July that it planned to buy Mercury in a move to strengthen its menu of IT management software and services. The combined company would be a stronger competitor to CA and IBM. HP has since beenÂ hit by a scandalÂ over how it sought to identify the source of leaked information from its board meetings. The company has acknowledged hiring a private investigation firm that posed as suspect board members and journalists in order to access their private phone records. HP Chairman Patricia Dunn is toÂ step down over the scandalÂ and California's attorney general has said charges are likely to be filed.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard may be on track to be a $100 billion company this year, but CEO Mark Hurd said there's a total $1.1 trillion IT market for it to pursue. Hurd, in a keynote address Monday at the HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas, told an audience of HP customers, partners, and employees that the company needs to continue to reduce costs so it can invest in innovation more. In an emotional moment in his 30-minute address, he expressed confidence his 167,000 employees are up to the challenge. "I know of no CEO who is prouder of their company as I am about HP," Hurd said, in an arena inside the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino convention center. HP's capital spending has remained relatively flat in recent years while its budget for IT maintenance and continuing operations has continued to rise. Hurd pledged that HP would increase its capital spending by a factor of four over what it is today, with a goal of getting HP to a point where maintenance and operations are just 30 percent of the IT budget and innovation on new technology is 70 percent. HP is in the midst of a capital project to reduce the number of data centers it operates, from 85 worldwide to just six, to improve the efficiency of its own operations. Hurd, who is also chairman and president of the technology company, said it also has a goal of reducing the amount of energy used for power and cooling by 50 percent, which he said would save enough energy to power the city of Palo Alto, California, HP's headquarters city, for a year. "Green is not just about being environmentally friendly, it's [about] a great outcome. It's also about the efficiency we gain and the money we save at the same time," Hurd said. While remaining focused on costs, HP is also hiring. Hurd said the company hired approximately 1,000 new sales people over the last 12 months, two-thirds of them in the Technology Solutions Group, which sells to businesses and large enterprises. Hurd said that all the innovation HP designs into its personal computers, servers and other products won't make a difference if the products are not well distributed. He said the company needs to hire more and better sales people and handle more accounts to better serve their customers. The Technology Forum is co-hosted by HP user groups, including Encompass. The forums help HP customers, particularly small-to-medium sized businesses get the company to listen to them, said Nina Buik, president of Encompass. "HP is going to listen to FedEx, Motorola or General Dynamics," Buik said. "But if you take that layer of SMBs who, collectively, probably do the largest spending for HP products, this is where their voice is heard."ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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SAN FRANCISCO  - Business software maker  Oracle Corp.  said on Thursday it extended again its $7.7 billion hostile tender offer for PeopleSoft Inc. , to Sept. 10, as it awaits a U.S. District Court judge's ruling on whether the takeover attempt can move forward.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co. president and chief executive officer Mark Hurd, speaking at a user conference Monday in Houston, told customers the company's goal is to listen to them more and respond to their needs more quickly. In a keynote address at the HP Technology Forum, which made only passing reference to the scandal that has rocked the company for the last two weeks, Hurd said "HP has made a lot of progress, but we've got a lot more to do." HP is on track to record about US$91 billion in revenue and an operating profit of $8 billion to $9 billion in fiscal year 2006, he said. That leaves $83 billion in costs that the Palo Alto, California-based company still needs to scrutinize for efficiencies. HP announced in July 2005 a restructuring that would result in the elimination of 15,300 jobs to save $1.9 billion in operating costs by the end of its fiscal year Oct. 31. Hurd told the Houston audience that while cutting some jobs, it is creating others and reinvesting in other areas to develop new opportunities for growth. "We want to spend money to realign our IT and make those investments so in the long term we save money," he said. Randy Mott, HP's executive vice president and chief information officer, explained the progress of HP's consolidation of 85 of its own data centers into six centers, two each in Austin and Houston, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia. HP projects that consolidation will save the company about $1 billion in IT costs over the next few years. The company gave some of the 5,000 attendees a tour of one of the Houston centers to see how they might consolidate their own IT infrastructures. Hurd's one applause line in his presentation was his admission that HP needs to be more responsive to customers during the sales cycle: "When we actually show up at the account, we actually get more business than when we don't. We're working on that right now." To be more responsive, HP has cut the length of contract terms and conditions by two-thirds to make them easier to understand, said Ann Livermore, executive vice president of the technology solutions group, in her keynote. That was welcome news to Sam Ayers of the Information Technology User (ITUG) Group, representing users of HP's NonStop server line. Ayers chaired an ITUG Advocacy Committee which pushed for the streamlined contract terms. "It took a long time for that to be decided, but it's here," he said. Ayers is an IT professional with Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC, the largest credit, debit and gift card payment processor in the U.S. Hurd took only a handful of pre-screened questions from the audience and after his speech was quickly escorted out of the convention center and into a waiting Lincoln sport utility vehicle. Aides and security guards prevented a reporter from approaching him with questions about the HP board scandal. State, federal and congressional investigations are probing allegations that HP hired a private investigations firm to find out who was leaking news of HP board deliberations to the media. The private agency allegedly obtained private phone records of directors and reporters under false pretenses to find out who they were calling. Media reports Monday said investigative methods also included physical surveillance of people and an attempt to install surveillance software on a reporter's computer. Hurd made only a brief reference to the scandal in his keynote. When he mentioned that Jack Novia, HP's managing director of the Americas region and senior vice president of the customer solutions group, was throwing out the first ball at a Houston Astros baseball game Tuesday evening, Hurd said: "I asked him not to embarrass the company, given the press coverage we've gotten over the last week."
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Â Oracle Corp.'s hostile bid to acquire rival enterprise software maker PeopleSoft Inc. for $7.7 billion is set to continue for a bit longer.
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BEA Sunday let a 5 p.m. Pacific Time deadline expire on Oracle's $6.7 million bid for the company
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Business software group Oracle Corp. said it had extended a hostile takeover offer for PeopleSoft by two weeks to November 5.
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HP (NYSE:HPQ) (Nasdaq:HPQ) today announced that Mark Hurd, HP chief executive officer and president, will lead a press conference on Friday, Sept. 22, at 1:05 p.m. PT, to discuss the actions HP is taking to address issues regarding the investigation of leaks from its boardroom.
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The HP (NYSE:HPQ) (Nasdaq:HPQ) board of directors met for several hours Sunday morning. It has agreed to reconvene late Monday afternoon. No further statement will be forthcoming from the company before that time.
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Hewlett-Packard&#39;s outsourcing business has scored an extended contract with Unilever worth $675 million, HP said Wednesday.
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By MAY WONG    SAN JOSE, Calif.  -- Hewlett-Packard Co...
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It's been a busy Monday for Hewlett-Packard as the company announced not one, but two proposed purchases. Somewhat overshadowed by theÂ $1.6 billion HP is forking overÂ toÂ acquire datacenter automation specialist Opsware,Â is the $241 million the vendor is offering for Neoware.
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Hewlett-Packard CEO&#39;s job could be on chopping block along with 15,000 others if Compaq deal goes through. Watch &#39;Tech Live&#39; Wednesday 3/20 at 9 pm Eastern for details.
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Companies with a public float of at least $75 million will now have an additional 45 days beyond the original deadline set by Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) expects fiscal 2008 to be another solid financial year as the company continues to fine-tune its cost structure in an attempt to become more operationally efficient. HP Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Bob Wayman, one day after announcing he will retire on Jan. 1, outlined the company's expectations for fiscal year 2008, projecting revenue between US$100.9 billion and $102.8 billion. The figures represent year-over-year growth of 4 percent to 6 percent and are in line with what analysts expected. The projections are also similar to the company's performance in fiscal 2006, when revenue of $91.7 billion represented 6 percent growth over previous-year revenue of $86.7 billion. HP already has set guidance for fiscal 2007, which began on Nov. 1, at $97 billion in revenue, or GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) earnings per share of $2.28 to $2.33. Wayman set 2008 financial projections as part of a meeting with securities analysts in New York on Tuesday, where he and other HP executives laid out the company's goals for the next couple of years. Breaking it down by business segment, HP also expects growth in its Personal Systems Group, Imaging and Printing Group, Enterprise Storage and Servers and HP Services divisions to be between 4 percent to 6 percent in 2008. However, growth should be higher in both its Software and HP Financial Services segments, the company said. HP expects its software business, recently buoyed by its acquisition of Mercury Interactive Corp., to have 10 percent to 15 percent growth in fiscal 2007, while its financial services business will grow 6 percent to 8 percent. Speaking at Tuesday's event, HP Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd said the company is a work in progress as it strives to achieve goals he laid out when he joined the company in late March 2005. To streamline the business, HP began a massive restructuring last year that resulted in 10 percent of its workforce being cut. Hurd implied Tuesday there would beÂ more slicing and dicing throughout HP to create a leaner business. As a result, operating margins should gradually improve over the next couple of years. In 2006 operating margins were 8 percent; in fiscal 2008 the company is projecting that will climb to between 9 percent to 9.5 percent, it said Tuesday. "We're committed to taking care of our business and our cost issues," Hurd told analysts. Â
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Computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. on Wednesday said it received a three-year multimillion dollar extension to supply film studio DreamWorks SKG with core computer technology.
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ORACLE has extended its hostile bid for PeopleSoft for the 12th time, pushing the tender offer through to October 8. Oracle said in a press release that about 23.