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HP, Compaq Deal Approved
EyesWideOpen writes "The merger between Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp. (originally reported in this Slashdot story) is now official according to eWeek as well as SiliconValley.com. From the eWeek article:'Hewlett-Packard Co. today announced that it will complete its $19 billion buyout of Compaq Computer Corp. and that the merged companies will formally launch as the new HP on May 7.'For you investors out there, HP will begin trading under the new symbol HPQ on Monday." A message to the Interesting People list gives some insight into the shareholder voting procedure.
Another ill-thought out merger between two unsuitable companies.
Over the past year, we've seen so much god-awful M&A activity - think Vivendi-U or, even worse, AOLTW - none of which adds any value to the resulting company.
HP-Compaq is just going to become even more unwieldy and over-managed. Synergies from merging two entities together, as we've seen from AOL-TW, are pretty hard to come by, and certtainly not worth all the pain...
OK, now for the Big Questions (tm) regarding this merger...
:-)
The desktop business isn't interesting. Neither are the handhelds, or the printer business.
What _IS_ interesting is the Big Iron stuff...
What happens to the PA-RISC stuff? All the HP-UX boxes? Superdome?
How about the AlphaServers? The GS160's? The Wildfire clusters?
OpenVMS?
Himalaya NonStop? Where does _that_ stuff go?
HP's got a history of taking stuff down the cul-de-sac and strangling it in favor of their own products (look up Apollo if you're curious)...
So what happens to all the great technologies that Compaq's bought over the years??
I hope they keep it alive. There's nothing (and I mean NOTHING) that clusters like OVMS. Transaction processing runs like a top on the Himalaya. SuperDome's got some neat functions too.
This is where the interesting stuff to this merger is going to be. Who cares about the desktop business?
thanks fiorina. now that you've screwed up lucent, let's screw hp. my poor friend may be out of a job as a result of this merger?
When Compaq bought out DEC, they made a big deal out of their name, saying that the "Q" in Compaq
stood for Quality. Yes, the DEC folks snickered at that, and still are.
Evidently, Carly and Curly decided to do a tip of the hat to Compaq and change the symbol, probably to deliberately piss off the old guard at HWP so as to incite them to riot^H^H^H^H leave. Just one
more example of [t]he[i]r arrogance.
But, one thing hasn't changed - the 'Q' comes last! Maybe as an afterthought...
Anyone who's bought a Compaq PC knows it, right?
I'm an old DECcie, and have respect for my opposite numbers at HWP, and certainly feel badly for them that they've been saddled with the CPQ albatross. Let's hope that HPQ's PC division really shows its true colors (as it has by losing several million dollars a month for the last year or two), and maybe we can shuck it and Carly and Curly, and tell Master Gill Bates and the rest of the Wintel Weenies to fuck off, and then we can make some real money building real systems with real operating systems without bowing to Redmond six times a day.
Then they go and do this, it's Sure! to lay people off.
Mergers pretty much always result in layoffs, since you end up with a lot of duplicate departments (HR, marketing, sales, some of the technical groups, etc.). Sure, the resulting company is bigger so you (maybe) need more people in each of those departments, but not as many as the sum of the two pre-merger companies.
Compaq went for the deal because it was effectively a bailout for their stockholders. H-P went for the deal because...hmm, that one's tougher, which is why the vote was so close.
Nominally it was to gain Compaq's foothold in the PC market, where H-P has been losing share. Why anyone would want to pay good money for such a position in a market that is slowing and rapidly commoditizing itself is another question.
-- Alastair
They will probably be doing a lot better than AOL/Time Warner/CNN/Netscape/Time because the Compaq/Hewlet Packard merger is a more vertical merger (both companies in similiar marketplaces and business space), while AOL/Time Warner was a more horizantal merger where AOL and Time Warner were in completely different marketplaces.
This merger has a chance of actually becoming a successful business.
...is long gone. It's a shame too.
In my previous jobs, HP test gear was a way of life. If you had a budget to buy new gear, no one was ever fired for buying HP. Now, that division is in shambles, the gear actually has flaws or is DOA, getting calibrations is a disaster and they've pretty much kissed-off a solid business for consumer electronics.
I do not know how much of this was the fault of Fiorina, but all I can say is that it's my opinion that in a few years, HP will be remembered for what they once were, not consumer electronics and computers.
It's a shame, but not unexpected. The visions of American corporations are tightly focused on the next two quarters, not on the long-run. They're willing to sacrifice long-term performance for short-term bumps in the financials and stock pricing. This is the crux of the games played in accounting, and it's a disaster that has yet to fully run its course.
"from the massive-layoffs-coming-soon dept"
From all of the employees of Compaq and HP who read Slashdot, Thanks for the reminder.
These massive mergers invariably slash the worth of all the companies involved as they go through their departments indiscriminately hacking away. The only purpose is big bonuses for the execs.
The bright side of this is that smaller companies who can actually produce quality products the people want and at reasonable prices will eat through the market share of the combined HP/Compaq like sharks at a feeding frenzy as customers desert the sinking carcass. And with all the layoffs from HP/Compaq that will be coming, there will be lots of talent around for the smaller guys to pick up.
Deleted
I guess it is sort of fitting that two companies that have recently continued to fail to capitalize on their investments would merge. Compaq bought Digital and failed to really do anything worth while with them. The Alpha was a badass of microprocessor engineering. Had something been made of it the entire industry might have been turned on their head. The 21164 whipped other processors of the time like little bitches. By 2000 only about 500k Alpha systems had been sold. That is bad marketing and poor capitalization. HP for some retarded reason thought the internet bubble boom was going to last for some long period of time and dropped their slow growth steady divisions and spun them off into a separate company. That is another failure to retain their market capitalization. They may sell a lot of computers and not go out of business no one is going to remember them for anything other than for a stupid merger.
....
Jeff Clarke: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Peter Blackmore: We get signal.
Mike Capellas: What !
Blackmore: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
Carly Fiorina: How are you gentlemen !!
Fiorina: All your Presario are belong to us.
Fiorina: You are on the way to destruction.
Capellas: What you say !!
Fiorina: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Fiorina: HA HA HA HA
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.