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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.
Kids(I'm looking at you, HP), kids(I'm looking at you, Compaq), didn't we learn anything from the AOL/Time Warner Fiasco?
I guess not.
Let's see how they're doing in a year's time.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
The merger has not been a comfortable thing from day one, and the press coverage has been very disquieting. It's clear what people like me in the company should do now - our best to make it work, regardless of anything that happened on the way. I said a long time ago that this could be excellent for Linux, and I still think so. It's going to be fun.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
$19 billion for Compaq? I'll give you $10 bucks for it.
I have to say I still resent Compaq for buying Digital. They killed off all the good research and turned it into another homogenised, bland corporate. Digital used be be a great company with great products in their time. HP has made some great products in their time. I wonder how long before they become bland and homogenised, selling lowest-common denominator boxes, avoiding anything that looks like risk, imagination or anything else that used to propel the computer industry forward. Now the only ideas they have is a takeover deal (and another and another). Great! That'll keep the industry going for the decades!
I'm just glad that no-one will touch Apple with a 10-foot pole. Everyone expects them to go broke every other week. No-one in corporate land really understands what keeps Apple afloat becuase it can't be boiled down to a finacing deal. And they probably realise that the customer loyalty and brand respect they enjoy will very probably evaporate if someone tried to buy it.
Read a bit about HP in, say, Good-to-Great, or other management books, and you'll understand that Carly Fiorina, current CEO of HP is a massive departure from the companies long term values, and it's showing in things like this purchase. I predict long term loss to shareholders from this merger -- it just doesn't make sense for HP. And the long-timers at HP knew it!
I'm disappointed in the shenanigans the poster to the Interesting People list described, and frankly, Ms. Fiorina, if you ever read this, I'm disappointed in you. Please stop telling people the HP way is one that makes office politics irrelevant! You just look like a jerk.
Let me just explain something here. German banks offer depository accounts for shareholders to hold their shares. However, they have a nasty habit of making sure that the shareholder signs over their voting rights to the bank. This tends to give the banks a disproportionate vote. The German Association of Small Shareholders is fighting this, but it hasn't really happened yet.
As the banks tend to have some interesting share positions themselves, this leads to major conflicts of interest. In the case of Deutsche Bank, they certainly have a large interest in IBM (not just as users, as shareholders).
Last point, when was any large merger good for anyone except the banks and the lawyers doing the M&A work? It seems like they may have a win-win situation, with organising the financing and possibly seeing IBM benefit from the transaction.
Here's what I see happening from the tidbits I've garnered from many a customers discussion with their HP or Compaq Rep.
1) Anything without an intel chip in it, the days are numbered. HP invested way too much in the Itanium / EPIC instruction set and they are going to can PA-RISC in favor of Itanium in their future Unix Machines.
2) Compaq already said Alpha going bye bye in favor of Itanium.
3) HP dumped their 3000 line...Can't see any non-intel compaq line sticking around much longer
4) HP will dump their entire business line of Intel products, the Netserver, the Desktop PCs, and the Notebooks. This does not include the Best Buy crap, just the stop corps use, or should I say DON'T Use. Compaq's product line will become HP's product line for corporate intel servers.
5) Toss up in the consumer market. HP & Compaq have been 1/2 in the retail division with the Presario/Pavillion, don't know/don't care what happens to them. In my personal experience of living vicariously through other people HPs Pavillions break more than the Presarios did.
6) HP Should maintain it's printer division while Compaq fades away.
7) The new company will claim all sorts of wlid thing like they've been supporting Linux the longest, they have the most Unix experience, etc trying to woo the Open Source community when in fact the people that are running the new HP never touched Linux, they just bought and destroyed other companies that did (Digital) and desperately have been trying to get some news bites about linux because other companies like VA Linux, Pengiun Computing, and IBM really support linux by giving things back to the community instead of just hoping it sells more of their servers/desktops.
8) IBM and Dell will continue to chip away the lead of this new merger, just prolonging the inevitable die off of even more hardware companies. If past experience of mergers with Compaq involved mean anything it'll be 18 months of a mess before anything positive comes out, and Dell and IBM will continually be beating on that. Dell from a price perspective, and IBM from a technology perspective.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
What kind of test equipment do you mean? Their test equipment and lab supplies spinoff, Agilent, is doing pretty well: many lab supplies you'd be crazy to buy anything except Agilent, and I'm (starting) to grow fond of the Infinium oscilloscopes, though Tektronix is still my preferred (I do NOT like seeing an oscilloscope bluescreen!). If you're buying lab power supplies, you're best off buying Agilent, as they're the most well known.
:)
Then again, it could be because I'm still IN a lab that's Agilent/HP dominated, so I might be biased without even knowing it. HP itself I don't think is that bad: printer-wise, they're still in the top running, IMHO.
I'd be sad to see HP flounder simply because the high-end stuff faltered. Maybe they can spin off their printer division as well, so the stupid parts can die in peace.
We've bought a couple of batches of HP desktops here and they've been no worse or better than any other desktops (Compaqs, Dells).
We've bought nothing but HP x86 servers here and have yet to disappointed by quality or workmanship standards. Even the documentation feels like it has links to the olden days when you actually got *good* documentation.
The few Dell servers I've seen seem pretty cheap. They have been low-end boxes, but there's a flimsyness about them that makes them feel like desktop boxes with server nameplates.
I have always worked at small companies in out of the way places doing interesting work, and not worrying too much about who paid the best. HP is the only big company I ever interviewed at, and would have been interested in working at, because they were not the typical Silly Valley company. They used to stand for long term patience and steadiness. Quirks in their equipment to be sure, but quality was there too. Carly is destroying that.
The 15,000 layoffs coming are a good example, as was spinning off Agilent. The point about not laying people off is not socialism or workers' rights, but rather the management mentality. If you know you can fire like crazy, you are more likely to hire like crazy. If you are reluctant to fire, you will also have a more long term outlook on hiring and expansion. If a project needs cutbacks, you will have the attitude of needing to find a new project for the current staff, rather than cutting back in a hurry and losing all that expertise, then later hiring like crazy and trying to integrate new staff.
That long term outlook is gone from HP now, with the Carly (and Curly) gang in charge. There are no doubt lots of the old guard still around, but they aren't in charge, and HP is on the road to being just another huge corporation, nothing special.
That's what Walter Hewlett tried to get across.
Infuriate left and right