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HP Board Sued Over Hurd Departure
Stoobalou writes "A shareholding company launched a lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard's board of directors earlier this week, claiming they bungled their fiduciary duties over the departure of CEO Mark Hurd. 'The HP board put shareholders' finances at risk by not telling them about the sexual harassment inquiry, and then later rewarded Hurd with an estimated $40 million severance package, the suit said. The board also failed to adequately police insider trading by HP executives, allowing Hurd and chief financial officer Cathie Lesjak to sell off HP stock in the midst of the inquiry, according to the suit, which was filed in California Superior Court.'"
HP is also facing increased scrutiny from the unrelated bribery probe that began earlier this year when their Moscow offices were raided.
Calm down HP shareholders. HP sucks because HP sucks. They've come a long way from the days when they made the best adding machines (and laser printers) in the world. Too bad most of it has been downhill. I just downloaded a 400MB file as, apparently, a driver for my printer. Then I found out that honestly it was 400MB of bloat and god knows what other hidden "features" that I "opted into" when I downloaded it. Good thing Microsoft had a copy of the real driver available through Windows Update.
HP sucks, and Hurd's departure has nothing to do with it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
this is insane. totally insane amount of money. none of us here, likely, will ever see even 1/100 of that amount of money on our lifetimes.
keep giving CEO's those huge salaries even after they have done wrong and you'll keep attracting the WRONG PEOPLE to the position.
pretty simple. want honest ceo's? stop giving them a theif's booty for a paycheck. if you make the job just a bit more than what the rest of us make, maybe we'll see some honest people taking those jobs for a change.
(never met a ceo that I didn't have to count my hands after I shook his.)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
the government can't tell public companies how to pay their employees and officers. but governments are huge share holders in public companies via their pension funds and are now using them to sue or force regulation that they can't via the legislature.
let's just call the whole thing off. Seriously? I'm guessing they couldn't care less if CEOs where raping interns as long as they get a heads up early enough to dump the stock.
Am I the only one who read that as "herp derpature"? Because really, that's an equally valid headline.
Just replace Hurd with Linux!!
That's one business process they'll never outsource to India.
For the last time, it's not HP/Hurd.
It's GNU/HP/Hurd.
They voted unanimously? That's the way I hurd it went down.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
In our stock market? Gasp!
Hurd hurd hurd
Hurd is the word
Don't you know about the Hurd?
Everybody knows that the Hurd is the word
I almost choked when I red the headline .. "Someone was actualy using Hurd???"
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Yeah. And Bob got fired for using the company email for personal use. This isn't the criminal system where crimes have specific elements that must be met, leading to a specific range of senteces. If a corporation wants to fire you, they fire you, then go looking for a way to justify it.
So, in light of all this, are they 'beleaguered' yet?
That's GNU/Hurd!
Oh wait.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
I just always assumed that HP was short for Herrrrp derrrP. Seems i'm not that far off.
The 1 billion gallons figure, distributed across 40 years and the population, works out to about 1/10th of a gallon per person per year.
harrumph
If we have learned anything from former HP CEO's that leave in disgrace is that they have a rosy future ahead in California politics.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
What people keep glossing over is the fact this man resigned for improper filing of expense reports. What CEO do you REALLY think files their own expense report? No director level or VP level executive does, they have admins who perform this task for them. Hurd couldn't fill out an expense report on a bet. He was forced out.
No, he was fired for internal politics because other higher-ups wanted him to go. The fraudulent expense reports were just the justification for a decision made separately.
The money in question amounted to $20k, which he offered to pay back. The severance amounted to $40m. Unless you want someone gone for other reasons, you don't worry about $20k when it comes to someone you pay $40m to leave.
Don't you normally fire people who steal from you?
Yes...but do you normally give them 2,000 times the amount they stole in severance?
This is a plot by Richard Stallman to get GNU Hurd back in the news again.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Gnu.org was sued for a missing Hurd.
...for articles like this.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The Michael Eisner -- Disney Company -- Michael Ovitz saga Here, was more egregious than this. The court held that the directors were within their rights to let Ovitz yank the rip-cord on his golden parachute. I don't see why this case would be different.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I honestly thought they were talking about gnu/hurd and wondered why they were suing HP of all people.
"But we thought people wanted Hurd to be finished?"
At least the market capitalization of HP went down by about ten billion dollars for this departure.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
He was fired for falsifying expense reports. You know theft, and my bet is it was grand theft since it was a CEO sized expense report. The board should have toold Mr Hurd, RESIGN NOW, with nothing or we are referring this to the DA for prosecution. Mr Hurd could then either enjoy his golden parachute in jail or left. Since grand theft is probably more than a year in jail, that means the big house in cali. Places like San Quentin where you get to be put on fire fighting lines in your spare time. Personally, I hope the suit wins. It would be nice to see a board held to their fudiciary requirements.
As I understood from TFA, they gave Hurd the boot. So, finally, someone is booting it, it's working!
SCO.
You do realize Hurd saved HP billions of dollars, right? He turned that company around.
Frankly, $40mil is not a bad deal for what they got.
The only real downside is he acted like a dumbass and they had to fire him to save face. They still need his help over there.
Hurd came in at precisely the right time. Fiorina may have been hated at HP, but the Compaq merger was completely her idea, from top to bottom, and it's far more responsible for HP's market position than anything Hurd did. I didn't even agree with it at the time, but in hindsight, it accomplished exactly what she thought it would. And Fiorina has to be laughing her ass off right now about this.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
That's old GNUs.
He was fired for falsifying expense reports. You know theft, and my bet is it was grand theft since it was a CEO sized expense report. The board should have toold Mr Hurd, RESIGN NOW, with nothing or we are referring this to the DA for prosecution. Mr Hurd could then either enjoy his golden parachute in jail or left. Since grand theft is probably more than a year in jail, that means the big house in cali. Places like San Quentin where you get to be put on fire fighting lines in your spare time. Personally, I hope the suit wins. It would be nice to see a board held to their fudiciary requirements.
This is a good point, actually. Hurd should have never been allowed to leave with that huge a chunk of money. Ask him to leave with nothing or sue him for grand theft. It makes sense. But of course, BODs always look out for their own. Always.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.