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HP/Compaq Merger Apparently Approved
Spinality writes "Looks like HP's hotly contested merger with Compaq is going ahead. Various news headlines such as this one at Bloomberg.com report that stockholders voted to merge, against the wishes of the Hewlett and Packard families. " There isn't official word yet, but this looks like
it's pretty much a done deal. Anyone else think the business world looks like a
game of Pac Man?
before they've hatched. The official tally may take as long as six weeks to be completed, and until then this is just speculation. It's still too close to call. All of these media reports remind me of, ahem, Florida.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Check it.
The register, in their usual style, compared the voting process to a zimbabwean national election....
So how long before we see a computer company named Compaq/HP/Gateway/Dell/AOL-Time Warner Computer systems?
When I finally see an announcement that it's happened and start seeing some Hewlett PackPaq(tm) boxes on the shelves, then we can start talking.
Randal Graves says: I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class... Especially since I rule.
With the current state of the (US) economy, it's a very smart move for hp & compaq to merge. in the end, i think the hp families will see that this was in the best interests of the company, since their combined market share will ultimately increase the market value after the merger.
I've had a lot of problems installing H-P devices. H-P has become a sloppy company, in my opinion.
I don't think Carly Fiorina is better than Lew Platt, the former CEO. It has been a long time since H-P has had a real leader.
Bush's education improvements were
Which is different from an actual tally.
Is she taking a cue from the last Pres. election and getting on the news with a fait accompli in the hopes of discouraging the last remaining mail-in proxy voters? Yes, AG did it backwards and conceded prematurely, but the media had no problem projecting before the polls closed. Lesson learned by Carly?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I find it disheartening that it's impossible to maintain a business with integrity and vision in the face of greed. The Hewlett family are not exactly soft, left-wing hippies; they just wanted to protect the strength of their brand.
Prepare to see the quality of HP products plummet. Prepare to see a slow death of niche imaging products.
Prepare to see layoffs of otherwise securely employed folks. Rah rah, share value.
Their network printers were so nice...
Interesting watching the share prices of HP (NYSE:HWP) and Compaq (NYSE:CPQ) - makes it clear what the markets/analysts think of this!
The time of mega mergers is here. Who cares if hundreds, nay thousands loose their jobs. Instead of innovation and growth, the companies are taking the easy way out. This works in the short run, but the economics will catch up. They can run away from slowdown only for some time, evenetually it will catch up. Luckily the economy's improving, otherwise it would have been a disaster. Such mergers are bad for consumers too. As long as they were competiters, consumers could get good products as both were trying to do one up. For example is Dell also merges with them tommorow, the competition space will get monopolized. It seems the hardware world is also going the software way. Like M$ monoplizes everything these big daddys gona eat up competition, what will we have them, open design hardware!?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Anyway, here's what HP has on their own site. Looks like most bridges have been burned in this one and if it doesn't actually go through HP's going to look like a pretty sorry mess. Too bad the combatants in this one didn't keep the vitriol out of the press, i.e. one page ads in the SJ Merc, or the 'dillitante' remarks.
IBM must be aware that even if it does go through, it's a house divided, which will take some time to come together, if ever.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
quick question...who else is now big in the world of retail computers...meaning like, you walk into a Best Buy or a Sears, whose computers are you gonna see??? this doesn't matter to me, cause i would personally never buy a computer from a store like that....but i'm just curious, becuase it seems like Compaq and HP were always the majority of the retail desktops out there...who is left to compete? or are they gonna have a virtual monopoly in that field???
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
This merger did not make sense for HP. Why would a company that is trying to get out of the desktop computer business buy another company that has a large desktop manufacturing facility. I agree with the Hewlett family for blocking this merger. Just because the merger might be approved by the voters by the narrowest of margins does not mean this is good for HP. HP is paying too much for bigger stake in the low margin pc market. What happened to HP's focus of delivering services?
I'm no financial guru. I have no clue if Carly is running HP into the ground and I frankly don't care. But her comments back in January, http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/hp-compaq/carly_ linux.htm, are very Linux friendly.
And I respect that.
Remembers me of another election and something about Florida... ;op
Anyway, if I was still working for HP I would be rather pissed off at Fiorina taking some fat cash from the merger while 15000 employees are going to get the boot (and countless more were laid off by her policy). Especially since she is the one who would have got the boot if it wasn't for the merger!
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
What I'd love to see if this merger goes through is the HP midlevel servers phased out and the Compaq ones come more into play. The Proliant series of rack-mount servers are stable and is rock steady, cheaper, and offers more options then a comparable HP. Then, merge TopTools into Compaq Insight manager, add some tweaks for NNM and OVO as well as a few other HP software tools and bundle it all together. They couldnt lose. You'd have arguably the best x86 server hardware with the best software management tools from one company.
Have you taken a look at Compaq hardware lately? Nothing compares to it serverwise, 2U servers with redundant PSU's, redundant fans and even redundant memory boards, HP cant come close.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
The Compaq/HP/Gateway/Dell/AOL-Time-Warner vs. Microsoft court cases that appear will be given the new name "World War 3". Thanks for listening.
Roadkill is yummy.
I hope this merger does not screw up the HP Laser line nor the Compaq server solutions.
They both make crappy desktops that I wouldn't buy anyway. I doubt if a merged company will do any better. Just one less brand of machine for Circuit City and Best Buy to sell.
``A decisive majority'' of shares not affiliated with the Hewlett and Packard families voted yes, Fiorina said.
It's going to take more than just a majority of non-hewlett shares to swing this one. The Hewlett family's shares account for 18% of the company. It's going to take *61%* of the remaining 82% to make a majority of the total shares.
Compaq LaserJet doesn't have a ring to it!
Maybe with Compaq and HP joining, the HP line of handhelds won't suck quite so much. For a CE device, compaq is amazingly good.
Nope, not me, I must be someone else...
...but my first reaction to the idea of this merger is that a lot of jobs at those companies are gonna be lost. My second reaction was damn those CEO's always look so happy when the screw the rest of the company. Oh well.
Sound waves should be free!
May I recommend Kim Stanley Robinsons Red/Blue/Green Mars Trilogy. Unfortunatley I can't find any links relating to the corporate intrigue found in these novel's and the picture the author paints of earth's near future but maybe you'll have more luck if you haven't read the books!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Ever notice how these mega-corps seem to keep getting larger? All we need now is the AOL/Time-Warner/Microsoft/Compaq/HP/Sony/Walmart/N ike/Kroger merger to take place and we will never need to know anything except how to get to the "Super Store". This sure seems to me that it makes it harder to break into the business. Sure, having a superb product helps, but if you can't get past the monopoly, then you will have a hell of a time getting to the consumer.
Ya gotsa wait for the validation of the vote is finished BEFORE spouting off about a merger. Did you douchebags forget the last Presidential election? The chads might be orphaned.
In any market where there is no way to grow the customer base by grabbing new blood, companies only have one way to increase their market share. Consolidation. This is what is happening and more than likely will continue.
Wasn't he dead at 54 last year too?
Sound waves should be free!
So what are the chances that after this ill-fated mega-merger crashes and burns (like so many others of its ilk) the next CEO with a bright idea for "early retirement," sorry, I mean "increasing shareholder value" will remember this? Or will the next CEO use exactly the same fantasy-number script that Carly is using?
Yet another merger where people will lose their jobs so the stock options of a few assholes will go up. Why does the FTC even exist anymore?
I own a small amount of HP stock and the proxy mailings for this vote were obscene. I received at least eight proxys - half from HP and half from the Packard family group. Only proxys by mail were accepted - online and telephone options were not available. The most recent proxy mailed in was the one that actually counted. All designed for maximum confusion. Messiest merger vote I've seen in a while.
Anyone else think the business world looks like a game of Pac Man?
Paq-Man? Is that the new Compaq hand-held?
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
I sure hope She (CF the ceo) doesn't fubar this one up big time. But then again, some how idiots manage to get jobs as CEO because they know the right people.
Have you ever seen a "what's good for Pac Man is good for the game" cheat?
The only decent thing about the Compaq laptops are the JBL speakers. Makes a good MP3 player and that's about it.
In 1998, or 99, Compaq bought out DEC in order to get the rights to the Alpha chip, and then didn't know what to do with it once they owned it. The already dwindeling VMS operating system became less popular as a result. Compaq directors needed to get out from under a badly handled situation, so they found a sucker.
HP finds its printer division doing very well and its computer devision growing too slowly, so they take the money from one and sink it into Compaq. It could work out well for HP, if and only if, they use the Alpha technology to their advantage. The desktop devision sucks anyway, and should not be considered as HP's salvation.
Tune in next week when . . .
The whole HP-Compaq merger thing is a typical example of how high-level executives who understand "business" think:
- They have to "do something" to justify their compensation.
- They don't understand the technology, so they don't have a clue as to how to make use of the innovations their employees generate (Xerox comes to mind immediately, but they're just the most obvious example).
- They do understand high-level finance, and how to fire people to create short-term gains.
So, they do what they understand - move big pieces around on the board, construct complex financial objects that obscure the connection between their actions and company performance, and fire people whose functions are superficially redundant.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
This could cause serious fragmentation of the Beowulf clustering market.
For a long time HP have been pushing their Wolverine Extensions (much to the dismay of clustering gurus). With the might of Compaq behind them they'll have the impetus to succeed.
Although, on the bright side, it brings Windows into the Beowolf fold.
Guess we'll have to learn that API now!
I have a pitiful few shares of HP stock from my time there, and over the past few months, I've received an absolute torrent of competing proxy solicitations from the HP board and Walter Hewlett. Every week, I got at least one new proxy card from each party with a "send this in Right Now" letter. This stuff arrived faster than one could conceivably respond (and even though I'd promptly returned the first green proxy card I got...) Towards the end, the HP board even priority-mailed me a prepaid Fedex envelope with another proxy card, and shortly thereafter a premetered ($3.50) priority-mail envelope. Last, and IMHO rather underhandedly, the board set up a phone-in-and-vote-your-proxy process during the last three or so days, something they would NEVER have let their opposition get away with. UN election monitors would NOT approve...
Also worthy of note is the tone of the cover letters: the Walter Hewlett "anti" camp focused on the bad business sense of the merger, but the Board quickly started a series of personal attacks on Walter Hewlett. This did NOT impress me with their confidence in their case: when you run out of logical arguments, slander your opponent's person.
It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings, and there is NO reliable way to guess who'll still be standing to deliver that final aria. The tons (literally!) of proxy cards sent in to the warring factions' accountants must be sorted and matched by sig and date to weed out proxies revoked by subsequently-sent proxies (and since so MANY cards were sent out, there'll be hundreds if not thousands of revotes); this will certainly take a week. Also consider (shock horror!) the possibility that the electronic or telephonic proxy-submission processes might have been manipulated. Carly's no Ken Lay, and it sure ain't the HP Way, but there's a LOT riding on this (several top management jobs, for example), so the possibility of skulduggery is NOT to be ignored.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
to quote an old line from Saturday Night Live...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
don't both of them use crappy proprietary form factor motherboards?
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
What was Compaq thinking? Compaq bought DEC and look what happened. Well now there's going to be a lot of former Compaq employees looking for work. HP has a low end server line, so why do they need Compaq anyway? I think they just need
Compaq's low end market share.
Possibly some of Compaq's higher end hardware will make it's way into HP's product line. Who knows.
The only sense this merger made in my mind was that HP was gobbling up a competitor. Why did Compaq ever agree to this?
HP laser printers with PostScript are first-rate. HP computers and their non-PostScript inkjet and multifunction line are what will spell doom for this company. The merger will only add more weight to their sinking business model.
Why merge with another computer company that does the same thing HP does in terms of PC design? HP and Compaq workstations are among the most proprietary PC designs around, making tech support a nightmare (I've handled both and still have shakes when I think of it).
HP has also stiffed me personally with crappy hardware--the OfficeJet multifunction printers have abysmal drivers that causes my computer to hang routinely, and the firmware of the printer is very faulty and wastes my time by giving off false hardware errors.
If HP thinks that a simple merger will help them, they are wrong. HP needs to concentrate on what they do best--and computers aren't it. How about an inexpensive PostScript printer that doesn't require an engineering degree to print one damned page?
I find Carly's determination admirable, but her goals are very suspect. HP is going the wrong way, and its too obvious.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Ok, thats just my opinion but from listening to the radio of the day of the vote reporters were saying that they were having a hard time finding people that were for the vote. Then again my regular newpaper showed up (front page) saying that it was a go. But we must wait and be patient they said it could take up to another week or so.
Re-count any one?
snowulf.com
I bet that Michael Dell is having a wonderful day because of this news.
HP and Compaq have a great products in some areas, poor in others. They have to merge not only their product lines, but the companies and corporate cultures as well. On top of that, they are doing this during a resession, too.
What they will end up with is a company that has, at best, an amalgam of the best products and services that in no way resembles the best that each company currently offers.
This thing has smacked of a hack-job waiting to happen since I first heard rumors of the merger a while ago. IBM and DELL are probably rabid and foaming at the mouths and chomping at the bit for this opportunity to absolutely eat the new company alive in the marketplace.
Anyone want to bet that they will rename the new company to something trite yet hopelessly inane, like Intricity?
/gag.
In addition to the Compaq merger, HP also plans to merge with Intel and UPS.
No comment was give to queries if the resulting company would be called Hic-UPS.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I like HP as a company, but their PC's suck. Meanwhile I'm neither way about Compaq.. their PC's are crap too but they're far better than HP's.. so as far as I'm concerned, I don't think this is a bad thing for either party.
Hewlett-Packard Company Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina discussess the current course and what's ahead for Linux in enterprise and consumer applications. Ms. Fiorina highlights innovative solutions that customers are implementing today and talk about the contributions and responsibilities of the Linux and open source communities in increasing customer value for Linux users.
The end of Ms. Fiorina keynote speech is worth repeating here...
demand for linux
The company that brought us the green ogre with the thick Scottish accent and wicked sense of humor wants Linux. Companies that provide the dial tones when we pick up the phone want Linux. And in between the two are thousands and thousands more who are recognizing the power, the flexibility and the smart economics inherent in this platform - and who are attracted to its openness and the inventive spirit that is at its foundation.
We cannot disappoint customers who are clamoring for Linux solutions. Standing still is not, and will not, be our legacy - with Linux, or with any other invention that has the potential to transform this industry, as we certainly believe Linux does.
Which brings me to what I see as the real power of the Linux movement.
The secret to its success is based on a belief in what hundreds of thousands of inventors can do together when you make full use of their talents. And here again, just like all the other great inventions that came before it, like all other great steps forward, the skeptics out there said: It won't work. It won't sell. It can't be done. It won't succeed.
Your collective response: Never underestimate the power of a good idea.
Anyone else think the business world looks like a game of Pac Man?
It's pure math, really. There is a significant, steady stream of new businesses being created, even if you only count the ones that make it past the infancy stage. Additional ones are being created buy spin-offs/spin-outs/demergers/whateveryoucallits.
In a country with a relatively stable population, this can only mean one of two things: Either the average size of firms must be decreasing, or a number of firms must be disappearing. The strongest of these two factors will of course be the latter. Given that the two ways in which companies can disappear are bankruptcies/liquidations and mergers, you could say that mergers are good. Even if a merger is followed by layoffs etc., a company remains to pay severance packages and face other liabilities. Furthermore, a merger is usually less wasteful than closing a company, as valuable assets such as brand names are more likely to be preserved.
In a dynamic world with quick changes in technologies and customer preferences, continuous restructuring is necessary and desirable. Mergers are important mechanisms of such restructuring, alongside entrepreneurship, bankruptcy, strategic alliances etc.
Now, I have to admit, I'm biased, since I work for one of the little guys, but I wouldn't work for 'em if I didn't feel strongly about it.
Say what you will about the mom and pop shops, but I've seen customer after customer come to us utterly frustrated by their experience with a name-brand pre-built. Seriously, the next computer you get, don't just waddle down to Best Buy or Sears, check out the small shops.
In my opinion, you get better value, better support, and a better warranty from the smaller companies than you do from the big ones.
Anyway, just my 2 bits.
I have friend who used to work at HP and still owns stock. Two things he says:
1. a. He is not for the merger
b. Does not have a single friend who is for the merger
c. Does not have a single friend who knows
of another co-worker who is for the merger
2. a. He does not like Carly
b. See 1b
c. See 1c
Too bad to see a company run by engineers now being led by a history major(i think).
For what it's worth.
Stop for a moment, and imagine a Beowu..... oh, nevermind.
...going to be interested in "retail computers" because that's all you'll be permitted to legally purchase, operate or have in your posession. And guess whose operating system you're gonna have to be running? :-( Taiwanese motherboards will soon be only available underground, for big bucks, in seedy little shops in the bad part of town. The names like ASUS, ABIT and SOYO will become analogous to "China White", "Panama Red", "Columbia Gold", etc. once the DRM, SSSCA, DMCA and other alphabet soup unjustices takes firm hold in this country.
Oh wait, there is also dec.com and the likes :)
Anyone else think the business world looks like a game of Pac Man?
Yeah, remember when Slashdot got gobbled up by VA Linux?
... and they'll face the consequences. After a merger, some employees loose their job because there replaced by capital. But that means, that the new company *have* to be more efficient - and it must acquire more customers than compaq and hp had before. I don't think that there is possible to increase the market share for hp/compaq so that the merger will be good for the shareholder value.
I personally don't like HP and I LOVE Compaq. I don't give a damn what anyone else thinks, I LOVE the Proliant server line. I have been doing this pushing 20 years and I'd put a Compaq box up against anything.
Compaq had done some pretty STUPID things in the past - I'll admit that. But if they just quit pissing around with everything that you can think of and focused their business on the server market - I think that they could make a comeback in a big way.
But with this HP/Compaq meger - Compaq is just going to go away. And I'll be left screwing around with these damn PC/server wannabe Dell boxes. Christ am I so pissed over this. I don't even want to talk about it anymore...........
FreeBSD: Nothing runs like a daemon with a pitch fork.
The reasons that this merger is just fine with the government are pretty simple. There's a measure for each industry called the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. If a merger doesn't make this number go over a certian boundary, it's all good. HP and Compaq are in an industry that is diversified enough to handle a horizontal merger like this one.
My grampa kicks your grampas ass.
We got him and grandma a nice little compaq to surf the internet with. Inside of a year not only was he installing peripherals, and software, but adding ram on his own. Sure I get like a call a month, and sure I get all kinds of "interesting web site" clippings from their local paper sent to me. But it's really satisfiying to see...err hear them getting so much enjoyment out of it. I didn't think they'd do a tenth of the stuff they've done with it.
That will certainly teach me to underestimate MY grandparents, perhaps yours have a similar lesson in store for you.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
I agree with Carly that HP is in need of major repair - the HP way, though laudable, represents a bygone era that simply can't be applied to modern business. That said, combining HP with another model of mediocrity, Compaq, in a hope to eek out savings-through-scale in the cut-throat, low-margin hardware business is simply not going to increase value.
These companies will spend at least two years properly integrating, during which time Dell and IBM will continue to lead, and in fact increase their leads in hardware and services. After the dust has settled on the two year merger process, the new HP will simply make its quarterly numbers by cutting staff and relying on long-term contracts in its traditional businesses....like 90% of the other mergers of the recent past.
Okay, I liked your remark about Apple, so I couldn't resist replying.
Apple has an odd market niche. There are actually plenty of more expensive PCs, you just don't see them in mainstream stores. To get something as powerful as the $2,999 2x1ghz PowerMac for the audio/video applications that are its primary market niche, you'd have to buy a $3,500-4,500 PC. You just don't see many of those in store shelves, so Apple looks expensive.
If you want a LCD monitor, the iMac is amazingly competitive, especially when the low-end models finally show up.
Of course as long as you have a Mac already, I don't see her as having tastes any more expensive than PCs. All the software prices I've seen are the same on both platforms.
D
I bet they've got Emachine's quaking in their boots! (and smoking out their power supply's...)
I guess there's always room for America's Choice Computers (available at your local safeway supermarket)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Great... now instead of 2 smaller, crappy companies we have 1 big crappy company. Oh goody, goody.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
What I've noticed is that every time companies merge, service gets worse, people get laid off and products plunge in quality.
I don't understand this weird business romance thing. It's almost impossible to glue together two very different corporations, especially if they are billed as a "merger of equals" where people don't get hurt.
People do.
I think 95% of the mergers that occur are shameful failures.
D
Are either of the families planning on voting with their stock (by selling)?
Amazing magic tricks
The greatest thing about this was how wildly public and outlandish the battle was; full page adverts in the Wall Street Journal (sometimes 3 in one section!), Commercials, radio spots, and even Mrs. Fiorina directly dialing up minority shareholders to get 'em to vote her way.
And guess who foots the bill for all of this?
You got it, the shareholders!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I work for HP, partly on an internal Linux project. Carly is NOT for Linux. She is a shrewd orator and will tell the people "what they want to hear". Linux within HP is a mixed bag of isolated groups trying to educate the masses. There is no long term goal and, although there are technical divisions that use it, Linux use is "discouraged" on the whole.
In fact, stockholders were allowed to vote multiple times and the last vote cast is the one that counts. There's no way that anyone can know the results yet.
HP products have been in a sales slump and design quandry for years... their products just are not what they used to be, but they still have brand loyalty and name recognition. Compaq has steadily lost out to Dell and IBM in all areas. This merger, if carried through correctly (and Fiorina is not the person to do the job right... where is Iaccoca when you need him) will result in a more powerful company that has both brand recognition and excellent technical research divisions for product research and innovative design.
The two companies on their own are doomed to failure in the long run given the big boys in Japan, IBM, and Dell being their competition. If the merger is handled wrong, you end up with an impotent and disorganized company with infighting all around... also dooming it to eventual failure.
Just my two pence...
Can anyone identify a successful IT tech merger of this size? Anyone? I think that IBM benefitted from the Lotus acquisition, but Lotus was (and still is) dying. Digital? Nope. NCR? Nope. Wordperfect? Nope. Packard Bell? Nope.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
1. a. He is not for the merger
b. Does not have a single friend who is for the merger
c. Does not have a single friend who knows
of another co-worker who is for the merger
2. a. He does not like Carly
b. See 1b
c. See 1c
Whats his married friends think?
Great!
Just what an unhealthy industry needs, bigger monolithic corporations with vision that stretches about 30 seconds into the future.
What I am concerned about is the HP printing business. A small lean company almost always does better than a huge monolithic crap company that HP and Compaq will become, sucking up dollars in areas the HP printing division will probably get less of anyway.
I don't buy the crap that they will have a larger resource pool. By definition if you keep the slice the same size and increase the pie you get LESS of the pie, not more.
Sounds like more Arthur Andersen accounting logic too me.
HP has(had?) great printers, in my opinion. I wholeheartedly accepted Walter Hewlitt's assessment that a stronger HP is to concede the commodities based PC business for shareholders and to concentrate on the printing, publishing, consulting industries in its computing division.
It also makes common sense.
PC's are a commodity item, making a larger corporation isn't going to help profit margins and actually further creates problems that will make the stock price more diluted.
I am very worried they won't have for much longer. If this merger fails, and creates a stock meltdown, HP's printer division will meltdown with it.
-hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
The Florida shareholders are having trouble returning their ballots.
-nd
Wasn't that a Party! Comic
Apparently you haven't seen the Penny Arcade strip about the Blizzard/Bnetd problems, have you?
3 -04
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2002-0
Note: I didn't link directly to the strip due to Gabe's comments in last Friday's rant section.
Hmm, I meant my parent post in good humor, but I apologize if that comes across the wrong way. I was just trying to show that the Pac-Man analogy extends further than you seemed to realize.
I think its great that they are combining efforts to produce crap together. More companies should do this. They could merge into one big landfill.
Crap + Crap = double the crap.
this really is a "short term fix".
like people where saying earlier, fire and hire.
a quick way to lower the losses for the next quarter.
really sad, cause the consumers don't buy more products that way.
and ti comes down to the consumer.
the dell's and ibm's are going to eat these companies alive.
really sad how thehigh level management is thinking right now.
I thought the pills were the contribution to the presidential election which allows you to can some
ghosts (DoJ).
Anyway the analogy get dpressing because you realize you are the little dots being eaten up.
That's because Compaq has the reputation and the market share in Intel based servers and desktops as well as the enterprise stuff (Alpha, Tandem, SAN's). HP sells this stuff as well, but stuff like the 9000 series UNIX boxes are kind of dead and they have nothing in the way of storage that competes against EMC. Not to mention that their Intel stuff is not really competetive against the likes of Dell. Or the fact that they have nothing in the Tandem universe.
The other thing to consider is that HP gets Compaq's professional services group. That's a big plus as HP really doesn't have a professional services group (thus the need to buy Price Waterhouse Coopers a while back).
Basically, HP gets everything they need in one shot..... Assuming that the merger passes.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
In times like this, i really hope that the other guys (Dell and IBM), don't try to kill the market.
cause right now they really do have the power...
The local (and only) 'Best Buy' store in my town has at their pc service counter a surprisingly refreshing selections of Antec cases, ASUS motherboards, Intel and AMD processors, memory, video cards, etc. You can actually buy all the pieces to completely build a homebuilt computer there, and for a small fee they'll even assemble and test the machine for you while you wait.
You can't mush two peices of shit together and get a diamond.
This merger is going to be a boon for Carly and crew in the near term, and bad for HP in the long term. The cash coming in to the merged companies will not change much with changes in employee numbers in the near term. However, the cash going out to employees... immediate and tremendous boost for HP/Compaq. Booting those 15K folks is going appear to do wonders for the bottom line -- do the math. But wait... there's more! They're going to renegotiate a bunch of other contracts, swapping cash up front for stock options to be redeemed at a later date, further boosting the apparent bottom line (don't have to report that stock option liabililty in the US!). Carly is going to look like a genius over the next three or so years, and she is going to cash out a hero. However, the effects of the downsizing will kick in, leaving the stockholders and HP a whole lotta nothing. Following this reasoning, I wouldn't be surprised to see "strategic investments" get whacked as well, and Linux is *definitely* a strategic investment for HP...
"Anyone else think the business world looks like a game of Pac Man?"
That kind of old fashioned thinking will get you swallowed up. I prefer to think of it as a game of CS.
mlylecarlin
There are two immediate problems with your invisible hand scenario:
1. The startups no longer seem capable of competing with the established behemoths;
2. The number of established behemoths seems to be tending towards one.
Lies about crimes
45% For
44% Against
11% Buchanan
Damn that butterfly ballot!
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
ÐÔÂ×Óà = Sexual Donkey Cat
according to the fish.
Yuck!
Hillary is *not* sexy.
Seek help.
Carly is even less sexy if that's possible.
Creationists often discredit evolution by citing the fact that we see species go extinct every day and few if any arising to take their place.
Many people here seem to think that the era of the mega-merger implies the same thing about business and capitalism in general, but they are wrong for the same reasons as the creationists.
Big mergers are big news; the creation of new businesses is not. We hear about certain IPO's, but these represent a very small proportion of new businesses. We're not going to know every time a couple of high school kids start a lawnmowing service in their neighborhood, or start hacking on a better DOS, or whatever.
Its been a while since I read it, but I seem to remember Mr. Marx described something like this "merger" process in his little work "Das Kapital." The outcome was not good for "der volks."
Fiorina has a bachelor's degree in medieval history and philosophy + a MBA. How the fuck can she run a company like HP?
A few years ago someone (I forget who) did a study of CEOs for Fortune 500 companies. The study revealed that philosophy is the most common undergraduate degree for Fortune 500 CEOs.
There's a funny thing about proxy votes. The more stock you own the more your vote means. Also, because this is a proxy vote the proxy has a mini vote and the majority choice is cast as a single vote from the proxy. If you've got 100 people behind a proxy and 40 vote against the merger, the proxy vote will be one for the merger. Add up enough proxies and you've got a sizable number of people voting against the merger. Fiorina is declaring victory far too soon in my opinion and according to most of the business papers I've been reading the opinion of many.
I don't get the projected numbers Fiorina has been throwing in everyone's faces. In all honesty she wants Compaq for production lines, some IP, and retail contracts with most notably Radio Shack. Between Radio Shack and WalMart Hewpaq would have a pretty big retail presence. Not everybody has a Best Buy, CompUSA, or Circuit City within an hour drive. They probably however have a RS or WalMart within an hour drive. If people are interested in a PC, retail chains are where they head to. However unlike the 2 + 2 = 5 numbers Fiorina is pulling out, HP and Compaq would not be expanding their markets. They would just consolodate shelf space. This doesn't lead to higher growth.
HP has gone from a company that actually progessed the state of technology to merely a competitor to Dell for presence on the desk. In the short term with decreased competition in retail space from Compaq, HP will do well. In the long run when the retail chains Hewpaq relies on start doing poorly they are going to suffer severly. In the said areas where HP and Compaq are prevelent, for some the only two choices, the market is going to become saturated very quickly due to the lack of demand. Sales of both companies' systems are already low, merging would just mean they would be collectively low even if their overall market penetration was greater than that of IBM. It's also funny how HP has twenty billion to spend on the Compaq merger yet needs to lay off 15,000 people. Next to go from HP will be their printer business at which point Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett will lead an army of zombies and demons out of Hell into Cupertino to make off with Carly and her minions.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I hope this sends a message to the Hewlett and Packard families that they've lost control of the company that bears their name. "The HP Way" (a trademark stolen from one of the cofounders) hasn't existed at Hewlett Packard for years now.
I voted for this merger because I'd much rather see Walter Hewlett resign from the board of directors and the Hewlett and Packard families start pulling their money out of this lost cause. Plus they'll lay off some 5 million more workers some of whom will find new jobs at companies that are doing good in this world. Hopefully HP will be so kind as to call the new company "Compaq".
- A former employee of the now closed HP FPK facility (no I wasn't laid off).
then the ghosts must be the justice department... :)
and the big balls must be campaign contributions
-EvilMonkeyNinja
Mild Mannered Host by Day
Wild Hammered Programmer by Night
When you have such a competative market that you have to slash profit margins to 2%.
It will be interesting to see who's left in a few years.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
From what I read, Fiorina agreed to bang all of Compaq and HP's shareholders if they vote for the merger. She'll get $50M out of the deal, but after that train, she'll be pretty sore for a while..
cpeterso
Maybe now they'll upgrade my Compaq to an HP? Wouldn't that be nice?
Anything's an upgrade compared to a Compaq. Maybe that's what Compaq's head honchoes realize: they are upgrading!
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
You won't see the new "Sad day ... Stephen King dead at 55" trolls until 21 September 2002.
Only 8!?! Sheeee-it... I work for HP (don't get me started.) and I have shares through the stock purchase plan as well as through the 401k plan. I counted them on yesterday...
I RECEIVED A TOTAL 49 SEPERATE MAILINGS.
Counting Propaganda letters from both sides, proxy cards, printed booklets, Airborne Express overnight return envelopes (Must be 10 bucks a pop).
I had heard that each mailing cost between $2 - 3 Million. But I'm not bitter since my web team can't get training, equipment, or even software packages to actually accomplish our job.
I love this company, but I fear we are heading right down the proverbial shitter.
*sigh*
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
Just build your own PC, there's no need to let anyone do it for you.
Worthwhile analysis. Just remember that immediately post-IPO, prices may be manipulated by those involved. (Illegal in some cases, but I saw it happen (not first-hand of course) many many times in dotcom 1998-2001.) It's quite possible for manipulation to happen before/after notable events like a proxy fight or an antitrust lawsuit verdict.
Pricing is not a fool-proof metric. Actually, on Wall Street, it's often used to entice fools.
Up, down? What?
In Dave Packard's own words...
by: lowflyn177rg 02/27/02 07:38 pm
Msg: 96336 of 96336
I just received a copy of a speech given in 1974 by Dave Packard to a group of upper management types. This speech is prophetic. (It's also *very* long and I don't have it in electronic form -- so I'll have to type in a few choice morsels.) HP had just announced FY73 earnings, and the picture was not a pleasant one. Old-timers say Bill Hewlett made a PA announcement that singed the hair off their heads.
Dave on Bill: "I suppose each one of you was just as shocked as Bill and I were when we got the figures together and found out that the profits were such that they did not support as high a bonus this year as they did last year, and you know Bill got a little mad about it and I guess he got carried away over the PA..."
Dave then goes on to talk about management objectives, and starts with this one on market share: "...for some reason we've gotten a little bit off the track in the last couple of years. I think last year in particular. For some reason, we've got this talking about one of our objectives is to increase the share of the market, and I want to start right out by telling you that that is not a legitimate management objective of this company, that it leads you to the wrong kind of decisions, and that hereafter if I hear anybody talking about how big their share of the market is or what they're trying to do to increase their share, I'm going to personally see that a black mark gets put in their personnel folder... Anybody can increase the share of the market by giving away their products, and that's exactly what we did in some cases in this company the last couple of years... and I want you to understand that that's one of the reasons in my view that we've made some very bad mistakes in management."
Later in the speech Dave discusses company growth rates, and he quotes an admired biz wiz at the time named Peter Drucker: "He says this about the growth company. He says, 'A business that grows at an exponential rate ... would soon gobble up the whole world and all its resources. The growth company is not a sound investment. Such a company sooner or later, and usually sooner, runs into real difficulties. Sooner or later it runs into tremendous losses, has to write off vast sums, and becomes unmanageable. There are few exceptions to the rule that today's growth company is tomorrow's problem.' And, gentlemen, what our job is is to make this company one of those exceptions, and I can assure you that if we continue to do the kinds of things that we did in 1973, what Peter Drucker says about the growth company is exactly what's going to happen to this company of ours."
Dave goes on to say much more, but the theme is that making profits on our products is vastly more important than gaining market share, and runaway growth for growth's sake is a surefire road to disaster. He said if a product wasn't profitable, abandon it rather than going after market share. Here's his words: "...we have a rather significant share of the market in CATV amplifiers, and we'd be just a hell of a lot better off if we hadn't ever touched that business and if our share was zero."
Ya know, CF is very fond of invoking Bill & Dave in her speeches, but always in a way that makes my blood boil because she misquotes or twists their words to support her particular idiocy de jour. If she'd take a lesson or two from them instead, we wouldn't hate her so.
In all this commotion, the only manager who had the interests of the employees in mind is Mr. Hewlett. Mr. Fiorina, Mr. Cappellas, and the hordes of pro-merger fund managers are eager to fire 15,000+ employees in order to increase profitability. These monsters are just 1 point in a growing trend. Hewlett-Packard (HP) originally had a pension plan like IBM. Then, HP discarded it. Now, HP has only a 401K plan. Increasingly, American companies are resembling companies in Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, etc. Throw out of the benefits and treat employees like commodities (i. e. slaves).
If Carly Fiorina has her way, the merger will succeed, and Carly will proceed to throw away the last vestige of "Americanism" at her company. I'm referring to the pro-USA rule that prohibits hiring anyone who does not have at least a green card (for all jobs that do not require a Ph. D.).
God bless IBM. It still has a pension, and it still maintains the pro-USA rule on hiring.
Quick:
242
-57
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?
How about Comlett PackPaq? No wait, that sounds like a small Pakistani child.
newtonEATpalm!
Do you see a flaw in this line of reasoning?
Those who subscribe to Newton's gravitation law do so by citing the fact that we see that objects are attracted proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Things falling down are big news; things falling up are not.
You don't think that something which has never happened wouldn't be big news?
The biggest evolutionary change we've ever seen is a change in the protien coating of virii. It would be huge news if we could create a new species.
All of our efforts with higher lifeforms result in sterility of the new being if the change is enough to warrant calling it a new species. Also, the effect is usually harmful to the organism, such as the famous fruitfly mutations which resulted in flies with no wings.
Unless, of course you count seedless oranges and grapes. They can't reproduce - they must be grafted, and are therefore really all the same plant, which would consistently die out without human intervention.
I don't think business is at all like nature. In nature, most organisms achieve an equilibrium with the environment (not a survive by dominating effect which is often inferred from survival of the fittest). On the other hand, businesses are guided by humans - and humans by in large do not achieve equilibrium with any environment. Business behave the same way government do - they work well at first, and get progressively worse until they are destroyed. The destruction of the old is always followed by the birth of something new.
Sure, the process can be delayed. But its never been stopped.
And it happens at every level - from the biggest company to the smallest.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The merger between HP and Compaq (if it goes through) will leave just one company HP. Compaq will cease to exist. The reason HP is doing this is to stay alive against Dell. If HP approves the merger then they will be number 1 in the server market. The merger is a good thing it shows that HP doesnt want to just make printers anymore.