HP's boardroom drama
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Internal investigation into media leaks at tech giant blows up into full-fledged media event.
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Still grappling with the fallout from a boardroom spying scandal, Hewlett-Packard Co. is now facing a Senate investigation into a stock option debacle that it inherited last year with its $4.9 billion acquisition of software maker Mercury Interactive Corp.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Like a good friend who has just gotten out of a terrible relationship, Hewlett-Packard seemed to be on the rebound and all the happier for it in recent months. After the departure of controversial CEO Carly Fiorina, the company has as of late shown newfound confidence and focus under new CEO Mark Hurd. But allâs still not well in the higher echelons of HP, as revealed in a filing the company made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The sudden and unexpected resignation of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Thomas Perkins from HPâs board of directors in May turned into a full-blown scandal last week, spawning law enforcement and SEC investigations and a PR nightmare for HP. At the center of the controversy is a legally and ethically questionable internal investigation of leaks of confidential company information to the media dating back to 2005. According to a copy of a letter from Perkins to the HP board explaining his sudden resignation, and republished on thesmokinggun.comâs Web site (a sure sign, if ever there was one, that youâre in the PR doghouse), HP hired outside companies to obtain personal phone records of board members using âpretextingâ (thatâs âsocial engineeringâ to you and me), in which a private investigator impersonated board members to obtain details of private phone company billing statements. In his letter, Perkins says he has proof that his own phone records were âhackedâ in the investigation. Those investigations ultimately fingered George Keyworth, an HP director since 1986, as the source of information about board deliberations and other confidential information, which were leaked to the media without authorization. Keyworth acknowledged he had leaked information at a board meeting on May 18 but refused the boardâs request to step down. Perkins announced his own resignation at that meeting, citing âpersonal frustrationâ with board Chairwoman Patricia Dunn over the handling of the leak investigation. In the meantime, the dispute has spilled over into the public domain. The attorney general of California asked HP to supply information about the leak investigation. The SEC has also been in touch over the 8-K filing HP made when Perkins resigned. HP believes its disclosures in May were âaccurate and complete.â In an Aug. 31 meeting, HPâs board of directors determined that Keyworth shouldnât be nominated for another term on the board.
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE  SAN FRANCISCO - Still grappling with the fallout from a boardroom spying scandal, Hewlett-Packard Co.
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Disclosures by Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Mark V. Hurd that he failed to read a report addressed to him about the company's spying investigation are prompting governance experts to ask why the company board yesterday handed Hurd more responsibility.
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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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Hurd has transformed HP into a growth company, but the success is being overshadowed by scandal.
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Is there any silver lining to the scandal engulfing Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) over its controversial investigation to find press leaks? Only if you're former HP CEO Carleton S. "Carly" Fiorina. This buzz-generating mess is the best PR money can't buy for her upcoming 366-page memoir, Tough Choices.
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(InfoWorld) - IT investors had a mixed bag of news to digest this week, in the wake of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s boardroom spy scandal, and Xerox Corp.'s annual pilgrimage to New York to woo the Wall Street crowd. It's a measure of HP Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd's success so far that the company has not been harder hit by theÂ boardroom spy scandal, in which outside investigators hired by the board used allegedly illegal means to spy on employees, board members and reporters. In order to smooth things over, Hurd will replace Dunn in January and retain his CEO title. The spying was sparked by leaks to the press, which ironically included information on discussions that led to the firing of former CEO Carly Fiorina. It's ironic because under Hurd, the company's takeover of Compaq Computer Corp. -- a controversial acquisition engineered by Fiorina -- seems to be paying off. Hurd has reorganized the company to cut costs, and HP is gaining PC market share and growing almost as fast as its archrival in that market, Dell Inc. Since HP is much larger than Dell, that growth is remarkable. Much of it is the result of reorganized company logistics, supply-chain management, inventory control, as well as a continued push on the product front. The spy scandal has not implicated Hurd, and that's a good thing. Company shares did take a hit after Tuesday's disclosure by the California state attorney general on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that he had enough evidence to charge HP officials. Still, shares (HPQ) closed Thursday at $36.25, about where they were right before the scandal broke last week. The share price is still up 3.12 percent for the month and 31.81 percent for the year. As long as Hurd is not implicated in the scandal, the company seems poised to continue its run, even if Dunn or other board members are indicted. Of the seven major brokers changing their recommendations on the company this year, all but one have been to upgrade their recommendations -- the one exception was before the scandal. Meanwhile, HP's archrival in printers, Xerox, is having a hard time gaining traction in the market. The company made its annual pitch to Wall Street last week in a series of product and services rollouts. The consensus among analysts appears to be that CEO Anne Mulcahy is making all the right moves: slimming down the company, integrating and expanding services, keeping up pressure on rivals in the small and medium-size business market, and keeping its lead on the high-end production market. But share price was not affected by her pitch to Wall Street. Shares (XRX) closed Thursday right where they were on the last day of her pitch last Friday, at $14.90. "The strategy is there, but Wall Street wants to see more growth," noted IDC analyst Keith Kmetz. Various competitors including Asian manufacturers have "nibbled away" at the low end of the market, Kmetz said, but Xerox still has a command position in the production market and is strong in the market for office color printing and multifunction devices. Only HP can claim to rival Xerox in the full scope of products and services. But growth is tepid. Xerox second quarter revenue rose to $3.98 billion from $3.92 billion last year. The message from company executives appears to that Xerox will be able to achieve growth rates experienced by HP as services grow nearer to 50 percent of company revenue. But as Mulcahy told IDG, "whether that will be in three, or five years, I can't say."
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By Jim Hopkins  Raising pressure on Hewlett-Packard, a congressional panel investigating HP's boardroom spying scandal is seeking testimony from two more company executives at a high-profile hearing next week.
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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 JOSE, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co.'s board considered on three occasions whether to break up the company, but each time directors unanimously concluded it would be best to keep HP together, chief executive and chairman Carly Fiorina said yesterday.
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(InfoWorld) - The attorney for ousted Hewlett-Packard chairman Patricia Dunn fired back Wednesday at public comments made by board rival Thomas Perkins about theÂ HP pretexting scandal. "Mr. Perkins...has made the biggest mistake of his career. He is a bully, and he is bullying the wrong people," said James Brosnahan, attorney for Dunn, in a statement in response to what Brosnahan called a "gratuitous attack" on his client in a speech Perkins gave Tuesday in San Francisco. In an appearance at the VentureOne Outlook Conference, a gathering of venture capitalists, Perkins said the HP dispute about how to control leaks of board deliberations to the media was really a fight for control of the board, which Dunn won, according to media reports of his speech. Perkins also lamented that many corporate boards, including HP's, have turned from being "guidance" boards into "compliance" boards. Rather than advising the company on how to run its business as a "guidance" style director, "compliance" directors are increasingly focused on maintaining compliance with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations governing publicly traded companies. He described Dunn as a compliance-style director, according to the reports. Dunn was indicted in October 2006 on four felony counts in California state court for authorizing an investigation into HP board member leaks to the media. Investigators hired by HP allegedly used false pretenses, or "pretexting," to get phone companies to divulge calling records for people they were investigating. A former legal counsel for HP and two private detectives hired by HP are also facing trial. The scandal broke in September 2006 because Perkins demanded the company publicly state, in an SEC filing, why he quit the board four months earlier. Because the state case is still awaiting trial, Dunn can't directly respond to Perkins' remarks, but her attorney had plenty to say. "Mr. Perkins generated an attack on Patricia Dunn, hired lawyers, hired a public relations firm, and all because his colleague on the Hewlett-Packard board [Jay Keyworth] was found to be leaking information. Now he is attempting to further prejudice the public against Patricia Dunn," Brosnahan wrote. Perkins quit the board when Keyworth was outed as the director who leaked information to the media. In his statement, Brosnahan said Perkins is likely to be called as a witness in Dunn's trial. He also accused Perkins of publicly criticizing Dunn to draw attention to Perkins' soon-to-be-published book, which is expected to touch on the pretexting scandal. A call to Perkins' office was not immediately returned.
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Here's a look at the unfolding Hewlett-Packard Co. boardoom leak scandal, including information on what happened, why, who's involved and what is known so far.
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By RACHEL KONRAD SAN FRANCISCO - Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn is under scrutiny from business and ethics experts after she oversaw an invasive and possibly illegal effort to snoop into the home phone calls of fellow HP board members.
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The Hewlett-Packard scandal revealed much about corporate spying. But boardrooms are still defining the ethical boundaries.