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HP Board Sued Over Hurd Departure

Posted by Soulskill on from the following-the-hurd dept.

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.

16 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. You don't get it by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re:You don't get it by godefroi · · Score: 4, Funny

      But how are you going to get special offers for ink and other supplies?

      WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE INK CARTRIDGES?

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      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    2. Re:You don't get it by cosm · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not necessarily. Retail PC's have some of the smallest profit margins, much of the bloat you see is there because its one of the few ways they can still get money (through the bloat providers). HP is no different that the majority of mainstream manufacturers. If you go to your local Best Buy, and pull the side of the case of a random sampling of machines, you will find that the only difference between most of them is the case. Internals tend to come from the same Chinese manufacturers owned by the same Japanese companies filled with investors from the same globalist corporations. Singling out HP in your "sucks" rant is a bit unfair, because these practices tend to be SOP for the majority of PC manufacturers.

      My advice. If you have any inkling of hardware knowledge, download the PC Gamer Building Bible, get out your Phillips, and enjoy the fruits of your labor. And if your doing the "family support" thing, reformat their machine for them with a clean OS install, setup a back-up routine, and install some LogMeIn free. Your headaches will slowly go away.

      A side anecdote, when I used to work at Circuit City, our managers would push us to sell an "Optimization Service" on brand new desktops and laptops, a service whose sole purpose was to remove the 3rd party bloat. I have never clicked uninstall more in my life (except for times I accidentally allowed an apple software update, sorry fanbois but dammit if they wont try to install their Bonjour, Itunes, and QuickTime on every machine on the planet to the grave.).

      --
      'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    3. Re:You don't get it by Gr33nNight · · Score: 5, Informative

      You downloaded the wrong driver. You can download the entire printer driver suite which is 400 megs or just the plain vanilla driver which is around 5 megs. Not HP's fault you can't read.

    4. Re:You don't get it by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm very familiar with HP's printer drivers, and generally they don't make the driver itself available separately.

      This is particularly true of multifunction (printer, fax, scanner) devices. I don't think I've ever seen an HP driver for a multifunction device that wasn't bundled into their 400mb piece-of-shit document management software.

      It's been a while since I installed HP drivers, but the standard practice was to download the suite, unpack it somewhere, and dig until you find the inf and sys files for the printer. Then you can just install it manually.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    5. Re:You don't get it by Ephemeriis · · Score: 3, Informative

      You downloaded the wrong driver. You can download the entire printer driver suite which is 400 megs or just the plain vanilla driver which is around 5 megs. Not HP's fault you can't read.

      It honestly depends on the printer.

      Some of them don't offer a "basic" driver download... And even some of the "basic" driver downloads are inordinately large.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    6. Re:You don't get it by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here is the driver for an entry level multifunction printer. Look under "HP Deskjet Basic Drivers"

      Thinking more of business grade devices? Here is the driver for a business grade multifunction printer. Again, look under "HP Officejet Basic Print and Scan Driver"

      I'm sorry to say it, but you are empirically wrong.

  2. HOW much of a golden parachute? by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."
    1. Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    2. Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? by smellsofbikes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      (never met a ceo that I didn't have to count my hands after I shook his.)

      I have. His name was Dave Packard. Back when HP was a real company they used to have company picnics and sometimes he'd come out to the Colorado picnic and help cook hot dogs. He didn't NEED to cook hot dogs, but it gave him a chance to talk to everyone, including the people whose jobs consisted of winding transformers or running the sheet metal stamps... back when HP actually MADE stuff.

      Of course, he was proud of the fact that as CEO he made less than five times the starting salary of an engineer, because he felt it was his duty to the company that employed him to put money back into the company rather than into his pocket.

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      Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
    3. Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? by Da_Biz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Many CEOs of Fortune 100 or 500 companies are compensated heavily in stock options. Proponents of this theorize that this ties company performance more closely to CEO compensation.

      I theorize that, structured wrong, this causes CEOs to engage in focusing on near-term benefit rather than long-term stability and sustainability.

    4. Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? by Rary · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People like Dave Packard are different from most CEOs. The main difference is that he built the company.

      CEOs who actually built the company are more likely to care about the long term health of the company and its employees. Career CEOs, on the other hand, care about the short term illusion of health, or, more accurately, the money they can pocket based on that illusion before pulling the ripcord on their golden parachute and moving on.

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      "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein

  3. Not a problem!! by SEE · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just replace Hurd with Linux!!

  4. boards and ceos scratch each other's back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's one business process they'll never outsource to India.

  5. GNU/Hurd???? by OzPeter · · Score: 3, Funny

    I almost choked when I red the headline .. "Someone was actualy using Hurd???"

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    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  6. Re:HE WAS NOT FIRED FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT! by localman57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.