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Did HP Bilk Its Shareholders?
jfruhlinger writes "About a month ago, HP announced that it was getting out of the PC, tablet, and mobile phone business to focus on software services, at which point, rather predictably, HP's stock plunged. Obviously, HP's leadership had been working on this plan for some time before it was announced, which leads to the question: did they deliberately mislead their stockholders by not being more transparent? That's what a shareholder lawsuit against the company alleges. How the courts treat the suit could have interesting implications for how transparent public corporations need to be about future strategy."
Shorter answer: No. Should corporations (really management/boards) have to disclose when they're going to release a new product that's going to be the next iPhone (on the good extreme) or the next Matrix Revolutions (at the other extreme). And what time-horizon are people to use for this crystal-ball gazing? Wouldn't IBM's management have been equally culpable for their decision to leave the PC market? Or how about bet-the-company gambles? I think we probably already have enough "you should have....." lawsuits already.