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.

Comments

You don't get it

[Dunbal]

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.

Re:You don't get it

[Gr33nNight]

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.

Re:You don't get it

[MozeeToby]

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.

HOW much of a golden parachute?

[TheGratefulNet]

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.)

Re:HOW much of a golden parachute?

[smellsofbikes]

(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.

Re:HOW much of a golden parachute?

[Rary]

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.