HP CEO's Stock Options Sale Under Review
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By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Dec. 14--Congressional investigators are questioning Hewlett-Packard CEO  Mark Hurd's sale of stock options that gave him $1.37 million in gains, 15  days before the company's controversial boardroom-leak investigation became  public.
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By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Sep. 18--Hewlett-Packard delivered a stack of documents to Congress today  related to its boardroom-leak probe, in advance of hearings later this month  to take testimony from HP's chairman and top inside and outside lawyers.
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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 congressional panel investigating Hewlett-Packard Co.'s internal probe of its boardroom spying has demanded that chief executive Mark Hurd explain $1.37 million worth of options he exercised just before the scandal became public, two congressmen said yesterday.
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(InfoWorld) - A shareholder lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard (HP) forÂ attempting to spy on board members and reportersÂ has been expanded to include charges of insider stock trading. An amended complaint filed Wednesday in the Superior Court of California for Santa Clara County accuses HP Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd and seven other company executives of selling $41.3 million worth of HP stock at "inflated prices" shortly before the company revealed that its investigators had used questionable and possibly illegal techniques to gain access to personal records such as phone call logs. The eight executives sold 1.7 million shares of stock between Aug. 21 and Sept. 6, according to the lawsuit. In an Aug. 31 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), HP said an outside investigator used the practice of pretexting, pretending to be someone else, to gain access to personal records. Former HP Chairman Patricia Dunn and four others face criminal charges stemming from their alleged participation in the spying, which also used e-mail tracer technology, according to testimony before a U.S. congressional committee. HP also tried to prop up the value of its stock price by announcing on Aug. 21 it would repurchase $6 billion worth of its stock, the lawsuit says. "In the midst of this acrimony HP executives cashed in," says the complaint, filed by the Lerach, Coughlin, Stoia, Geller, Rudman & Robbins LLP law firm. HP issued a statement calling the lawsuit "baseless." The lawsuit "represents a transparent effort to exploit issues related to HP's recent investigation for personal gain at the expense of HP, its shareholders and its employees," the statement said. "HP will defend itself vigorously." HP acknowledged that it had obtained the phone records of 12 people by using pretexting. The stockholder lawsuit, originally filed in September, asks the court to declare that HP's executives have "committed breaches of their fiduciary duties" and to order executives to repay the amount the company has been damaged by the spying scandal. The lawsuit also asks the court to require HP to reform its corporate governance and to extract punitive damages from Dunn, Hurd and other HP executives.
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HP CEO wants more cuts to increase profitability and grow the company.
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By Connie Guglielmo  Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest maker of personal computers, said it would withdraw its shares from the Nasdaq Stock Market to reduce its listing fees.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ Chief Executive Officer and President Mark Hurd Friday confirmed that he approved a probe of HP employees, board members and journalists in an effort to find out who on the HP board was leaking confidential information outside of the company. However, Hurd said he did not approve the placement of tracing technology in an e-mail to a journalist, and apologized for this and any other "inappropriate" tactics -- such as physical surveillance and obtaining phone records under false pretenses, known as "pretexting" -- that HP undertook in its investigation to find the source of information leaks. "I extend my sincere apology to those journalists who were investigated and to everyone who was impacted," Hurd said. "The inappropriate techniques that were applied do not reflect the value of HP. ... These are not indicative of how we conduct business at HP." Hurd also said he accepted the resignation of Patricia Dunn from her position as chairman of the HP board and a director, effective immediately, and thanked her for her eight years of service on HP's board. Previously, Dunn was to stay on as a director of the board, but would step down as chairman in January. Hurd now takes on the role of chairman of HP's board. HP also appointed Bart M. Schwartz, a former U.S. prosecutor, as board counsel. His role will be to perform an independent review of investigative methods and the company's Standards of Business Conduct processes, and to make future recommendations for implementing best practices. He will report to Hurd and HP Chief Financial Officer Bob Wayman. Hurd said that HP had the "best intentions" when it began the first of two phases of a probe into boardroom leaks, but said it "turned in a direction we could not have anticipated" and he takes full accountability for what transpired. "I take this very seriously and commit to getting to the bottom of this," he said. "Our job is to fix this and get back to the job of running the business." Hurd did not field reporter questions at the press conference, at which HP searched attendees' bags and did not allow video cameras. Hurd plans to appear at an U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing about HP's investigation on Thursday, Sept. 28., and said he did not want questions on Friday to interfere with that testimony. Mike Holston, a partner with law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, also spoke at the press conference on Friday. HP appointed the firm, which reports directly to Hurd, on Sept. 8 to investigate the tactics used by HP and third-party investigators in its probe. Holston said his firm has read more than 1 million pages of documents about two internal HP investigations -- called Kona 1 and Kona 2 -- and is still in the process of putting together the details of what took place. He declined to identify by name the people HP investigated. However, Holston did confirm that HP worked with two third-party organizations -- Security Outsourcing Services and Action Research Group -- to investigate employees, board members and/or former board members and their families, and journalists and their families. That investigation included physical surveillance, obtaining social security numbers of those being investigated to obtain phone records and the placement of e-mail tracing technology in an e-mail to one journalist, he said. Friday's news conference followed a steady stream of news reports over the last two weeks with revelations of actions HP and its outside investigators allegedly took to discover the source of company leaks to the media. Schemes allegedly considered included an attempt to plant spies inside the San Francisco newsrooms of The Wall Street Journal and CNET Networks Inc. posing as clerical workers or janitors, and a sting operation in which a fake anonymous source within HP would e-mail CNET reporter Dawn Kamamoto with a tip and track her e-mails to see if she contacted her other HP sources about the tip. Holston said Friday that while there was evidence that HP considered starting undercover operations in the newsrooms of the Journal and CNET, there is no evidence that such operations ever took place. He also confirmed that HP did try to track one reporterâs e-mail through tracing technology, but did not name the reporter involved and said there was no evidence at this time that the HP investigation team was aware that the tracer was activated.
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HP says it will cooperate with a request from a U.S. House subcommittee questioning  why CEO Mark Hurd sold HP stock just before a boardroom spying scandal broke in September.
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PALO ALTO, Calif. Shares of Hewlett-Packard are moving in heavy volume this morning as investors react to the Palo Alto-based company&#39;s strong earnings report.
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In a security analysts' conference this morning, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd's message did not exactly follow the holiday spirit. Another round of cost-cutting at what can now be called the world's #1 PC manufacturer will be under way. During the first stage, which began in July 2005, the company let go of 15,300 employees; thus far, layoffs have not been mentioned for the next round, though it's not unlikely.
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By Bloomberg, AP and Staff Reports  The congressional panel investigating Hewlett-Packard Co.'s boardroom spying has demanded that CEO Mark Hurd explain $1.37 million worth of options he exercised just before the scandal became public, two congressmen said Wednesday.
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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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Congress is taking a close look at suspiciously timed stock options for top company executives, a corporate practice that is a source of anger for shareholders and the subject of federal investigations.
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Shares of Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N   fell as much as 5 percent on Thursday after a newspaper report   indicated that Chief Executive Mark Hurd may be linked to a   controversial internal investigation of boardroom media leaks.
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Four senior executives at Pegasystems Inc. got some very good news one Friday in April 2003. Directors of the Cambridge software company had awarded them a total of 240,000 stock options with an exercise price set to reflect prevailing market prices.
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By Connie Guglielmo  Shares of Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest maker of personal computers, fell Wednesday after holiday price cuts on PCs weighed on profit margins and the company's growth forecast disappointed some investors.