HP chairman resigns, CEO confirms knowledge of probe
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CEO Mark Hurd takes over chairman's post as Patricia Dunn resigns from a board grappling with scandal.
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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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Dunnie flushed Patricia Dunn has not survived the HP spy scandal â a turn of events that everyone except HP saw as inevitable long ago. Dunn today resigned from HP's board, elevating CEO Mark Hurd to the Chairman role.â¦
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N said   on Tuesday that George Keyworth resigned from its board after   he acknowledged being a source of information in a scandal over   boardroom press leaks.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co.'s (HP's) board of directors has approved a severance package including $3.7 million in stock options for its general counsel, who resigned Thursday amid a growing scandal into HP's conduct during an investigation into board leaks. Ann BaskinsÂ resigned Thursday just before a U.S. Congress subcommittee hearing on HP's investigation methods, including investigators pretending to be reporters or board members to gain access to their personal telephone records and other data. That practice is often called pretexting. During the hearing, former HP Chairwoman Patricia DunnÂ told lawmakers that Baskins had repeatedly told her the year-long investigation was done legally. HP filed a form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Thursday saying it would provide Baskins with a compensation package, including the option to sell her outstanding stock options, worth nearly $3.7 million, by Nov. 22. Baskins will also have access to the vested portion of her retirement account at HP and to other benefits. If she accepts the package, she will give up any claims against HP and its employees, according to the SEC document. Baskins declined to testify before the subcommittee, citing her right to not testify against herself. Members of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce hammered HP officials Thursday for investigators who allegedly lied to gain access to others' personal records, for attempting to trace the e-mail of a reporter and for following reporters and board members. Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, also questioned why HP was giving Baskins a "golden parachute" after Dunn identified her being one of the internal leaders of the leak investigation. "Do you think that's appropriate?" he asked Dunn. Dunn,Â who resigned from the HP board Sept. 21, said she was not a part of the board discussion to approve Baskins' severance package. She would have to hear the discussion before deciding if it was appropriate, she said. Baskins worked for HP for 24 years and served the company well before the recent questions, Dunn said. "She bled HP blue," Dunn said. "She made some mistakes."
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Hewlett-Packard Co. , the world's largest printer and personal-computer maker, settled regulators' claims that it misled investors by failing to say why a director resigned amid a probe of boardroom leaks.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard obtained the telephone records of nine reporters as part of its internal probe of information leaks, the company confirmed Thursday. The company sent the list of the nine reporters to the Office of the Attorney General of the State of California, in response to the Attorney General's inquiries. "HP is dismayed that the phone records of journalists were accessed without their knowledge, and we are fully cooperating with the attorney general's investigation," said company spokesman Ryan Donovan. In an Aug. 31 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),Â HP admittedÂ that an outside investigator had used "pretexting," a technique in which an investigator may obtain information by disguising their identity. HP's internal investigation was sparked by what the company said were "multiple leaks of confidential HP information," including discussions by the board of directors, HP said in the SEC filing. At a May 18 board meeting, HP board members asked fellow director George A. Keyworth II to resign, as a source of those leaks. He declined, but Thomas J. Perkins did resign over a dispute with HP's Nonexecutive Chairman Patricia Dunn over the investigation's handling, the company said. The California Attorney General has asked HP for information about techniques used in the leak investigation, while the SEC is making inquiries into a filing HP made when Perkins resigned. HP's Donovan confirmed reports that among the journalists whose phone records were accessed were a reporter from The Wall Street Journal and a reporter from CNet Networks. He declined to name the other reporters. The Wall Street Journal and CNet published reports including leaked information from board meetings. The leaks to the Wall Street Journal included information about discussions leading up to the firing of Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina last year. The Attorney General's office declined to name the reporters on the list handed over by HP. (Additional reporting by Stephen Lawson in San Francisco.) Â
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HP board chairwoman agrees to resign    LOS ANGELES, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn agreed to resign next year in an effort to defuse a widening scandal surrounding the company's use of private investigators to obtain directors' phone records.
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Patricia Dunn is out as Hewlett-Packard's chairwoman and another board member quits as the investigation into the company fraudulently obtaining personal phone records widens.
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Hewlett-Packard Co.  on  Thursday said its general counsel, Ann Baskins, had resigned,  effective immediately, ahead of a U.S. House of Representatives  hearing on the company's methods in investigating boardroom  leaks.
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(InfoWorld) - California Attorney General Bill Lockyer says criminal charges are "likely" in the scandal surrounding alleged spying involving the board of Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), reports say. Meanwhile, HP board Chairman Patricia Dunn says she will not resign over the scandal and that she was "appalled" that contractors hired to investigate news leaks used potentially illegal methods, news reports say. The Wall Street Journal reported the HP board will hold a special meeting by phone this weekend to discuss the situation. HP is on the defensive after the disclosures this week thatÂ phone records of HP board membersÂ andÂ journalistsÂ were hacked to see who on the board discussed confidential strategy sessions with reporters earlier this year. The company disclosed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday that investigators, in order to identify the leaker, had used "pretexting," a method in which false pretenses are used to gain online access to others' phone records. The investigation determined that director George Keyworth was the source for a Cnet.com story in January about HP's strategy. Keyworth was asked to resign from the board in May but refused. Board member Thomas Perkins, a renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist, did resign in May in protest over concerns with the HP board's handling of investigations into leaks of confidential information. Dunn, in an interview in the Journal Friday, said that while she ordered the investigation of board news leaks, she did not know the investigators hired to conduct the probe used pretexting. "I was appalled. And I'm going to apologize," to those journalists, she told the Journal. Because she was also subject to investigation, she said she could not have known what methods the investigators used. But while she does not plan to resign, Dunn will take into consideration what the board thinks she should do. "I serve entirely at the pleasure of the board,'' Dunn told the Journal. "If they determine it no longer is in the interest of shareholders [for me to remain on the board] I will do so.'' Charges could be filed under a California law prohibiting gaining unauthorized access to computer data or under another law prohibiting identity theft through unauthorized use of personal information, published reports say. The investigation is ongoing but prosecution is likely because a crime has occurred, Lockyer told the San Jose Mercury News. A bill to specifically outlaw pretexting is on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk awaiting his signature. The governor has until the end of September to sign or veto the bill, spokesman Darrel Ng told IDG News Service. Schwarzenegger hasn't taken a position on the pretexting bill, but only because it is one of hundreds of bills passed during the recently concluded session of the California Legislature, Ng said.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. announced this morning that its chairman, Patricia C. Dunn, will step down in January, amid accusations that she enabled or condoned potentially illegal spying on other board members in attempting to root out the source of leaks to the media.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N said on   Tuesday Chairman Patricia Dunn will step down on January 18,   2007, after coming under fire for ordering a controversial   board investigation into boardroom leaks to the media.
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Hewlett-Packard Co.'s top lawyer   resigned on Thursday as U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers   scolded current and former top executives for invading   individuals' privacy to find the source of boardroom leaks.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard chief executive officer Mark Hurd blamedÂ the scandalÂ that has besieged his company on "a rogue investigation" that got out of hand, in an advance copy of his Congressional testimony released by a House Subcommittee on Wednesday. "How did such an abuse of privacy occur in a company renowned for its privacy? The end came to justify the means," Hurd wrote. "The investigation team became so focused on finding the source of the leaks that they lost sight of the privacy of reporters and others. They lost sight of the values HP has always represented." Former HP Chairman Patricia Dunn,Â forced to resignÂ Sept. 21 because of the scandal, defended in her testimony her decision toÂ investigate the leaksÂ of confidential board discussions to the news media. In her testimony, Dunn wrote that she knew investigators were obtaining the phone records of people it was investigating. Lawyers for HP and for an investigation firm carrying out the probe assured her the tactics were legal, she wrote. "I was fully convinced that HP would never engage in anything illegal," she wrote. "Given that attorneys were unambiguously overseeing the investigation ... reinforced my understanding that the investigations were being handled appropriately." Both are among severalÂ witnesses expected at a hearingÂ before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday in Washington. The committee is looking into the practice of "pretexting," or using false pretenses to gain access to confidential records. Investigators hired by HP to find the source of leaks engaged in pretexting to get hold of the phone records of directors, HP employees and reporters who cover the Palo Alto, California, technology company. Hurd, echoing comments he made in a news conference last Friday at HP's headquarters, said he was determined to get to the bottom of this episode and to try to restore HP's image. "I pledge that HP will take whatever steps are necessary to make sure nothing like this ever happens again," he wrote, "and that this company will regain not just its reputation ... but its pride." Although much of the criticism of the scandal surrounds the tactics used by the investigators, Dunn wrote in her testimony that equal consideration should be given to the leaks from within the company that damaged HP. HP's board was notorious for its leaks to news media and such disclosures made it difficult for the board to deal with important issues candidly, she wrote. Dunn explained that board deliberations on the selection of a replacement for former CEO Carly Fiorina in 2005 were leaked. She cited a BusinessWeek magazine story "disclosing opinions about various candidates and revealing details about ... the search process." "If you were a top CEO candidate, would you want to work for a company whose board could not be trusted to keep such information confidential? HP is very lucky to have been able to recruit Mark Hurd under such circumstances," Dunn wrote. "I wish fervently that none of this had ever happened," Dunn continued. "But boards have an unquestionable obligation to take steps to prevent [leaks]. That certain steps taken during the investigation went well beyond what was appropriate does not undermine the importance of the board's mission in this matter." Hurd also outlined several steps the company is taking internally to clarify its privacy policy for employees and to emphasize it in employee training programs.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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PALO ALTO, California  - Hewlett-Packard Co. on   Friday said Chairman Patricia Dunn had resigned effective   immediately as pressure on the computer maker mounts over an   internal investigation into boardroom leaks.