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HP Will Pay $100 Million To Settle Autonomy-Related Lawsuit
itwbennett writes: Although it 'believes the action has no merit,' HP today announced it will pay $100 million in a settlement with PGGM Vermogensbeheer B.V., the lead plaintiff in the securities class action arising from the impairment charge taken by HP following its acquisition of Autonomy. This is just the latest episode in the fallout from HP's Autonomy acquisition.
Well then ... I assert that HP is acting as a proxy for alien spies, and using their market position to facilitate the takeover of planet Earth by producing ever-crappier consumer products, and ensuring their web pages are useless and mind-numbingly badly written with useless URLs.
Give me my fucking $100 million dollars.
Sorry, but if it has no merit, $100 million to make it go away is an awful lot of money.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ah, but you have to ask yourself .. is incompetence at running a corporation and a history of shady dealing and breaking the law an asset or a liability in this case?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Umm... Lets see. Fiorina's term as CEO ended in 2005. Hurd was CEO from 2005 till mid 2010. Apothekar takes over in mid 2010 and a year later Autonomy is acquired.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm no fan of Fiorina but it's a stretch to lay this on Fiorina. The acquisition was probably started under Hurd but Apothekar had a year to do due diligence and back out.
She had been gone for years before HP bought Autonomy.
nope. For all her faults - and there are many - this one is all about the true Master of Disaster at HP, the incredibly incompetent and massively overwhelmed Hasso Plattner, the one-trick-pony from SAP who sees everything as an accounting software house, and runs it accordingly. He could run anything that isn't SAP into the ground without breaking a sweat. Maybe he should take over Carly's campaign...
There's this thing called Google, and it is full of little facts like this one... everyone should try it!
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
Léo Apotheker and Mark Hurd, Meg Whitman got left holding the bag and is now doing damage control. I don't think Carly was involved but she did a great deal of damage as well.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Go ask George W. Bush.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Ah, but you have to ask yourself .. is incompetence at running a corporation and a history of shady dealing and breaking the law an asset or a liability in this case?
Exactly.
Also, keep in mind, the last concern any POTUS has is actually worrying about budgets or spending. Any actions that spell otherwise are nothing but window dressing.
In fact, one could easily use the words "balanced budget" as a litmus test for anyone running. Anyone believing that's even a relevant talking point anymore is a fucking moron, as is the candidate who would even dare to whisper it.
And I'm willing to bet we'll hear more than a whisper. I simply fail to understand how anyone could still fall for that shit.
Could this be a sign that the Fiorina/Hurd/Apoteker era is coming to an end for HP? Large companies often have near-death experiences before something gets too bad to ignore. IBM had this in the early 90s, and had to resort to major surgery to stay in the game. They're currently experiencing another one under Rometty, maybe the last, by which they're gutting everything out of the company and trying to become a white-shoe management consulting firm...with big data!
I'm guessing HP is doing the same. They just hived off their PC/printer division, probably to sell it off to the highest bidder sometime soon. It remains to be seen whether the Enterprise division has anything good left to sell. Their servers are very good, and their non-consumer PCs/printers are still good. Software is awful, don't know about their network stuff, and that steaming mass of former EDS services guys probably won't help. :-)
And Hilary Clinton.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Not directly Fiorina's fault, but another disaster brought about the toxic culture she helped put into place.
Is HP capable of doing anything these days without either making a complete hash of it, or landing in legal trouble?
That's an inclusive 'or' - they appear to be quite capable of making a complete hash of something AND landing in legal trouble over it.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
HP was already dysfunctional when she arrived.
She was named CEO primarily because the board thought it would be nice to have a woman in that job. Of course, why wouldn't someone who majored in medieval history be perfect to lead a tech company?
Hillary Clinton never ran a corporation.
She got a cushy job as a lawyer because her husband was governor. Not one honest job sense.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Her qualification was having run a Telco while all Telco's stock value was rising.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
She didn't "run a telco", although she did chair Lucent's consumer communications joint venture with Philips consumer communications - which failed.
After that she led a sales and marketing group until HP hired her.
.
This decision must have passed the legal department. :)
And it seems they've advised the top brass this case has no merit and they'll happily fight it.
For a cool $100 million + in legal fees
So for once HP did the smart thing.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
None of the linked articles seem to say....
Hate to burst your bubble but that happened under Leo Apothekers leadership. Last time I checked he wasn't planning on running for President of the United States.
What bright Spark at HP thought buying Autonomy would be a good idea?
Let me guess ... she's running for president of the United States. And we thought dubya was bad.
Apotheker was the one that put together the Autonomy deal, although I think they pulled the ejection lever on him just prior to it being finalized.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
'Sfunny, I was just coming to post "at least this foul-up can't be blamed on that idiot that's currently running for President", and here I find that someone has already tried to blame that idiot! :)
This decision must have passed the legal department.
And it seems they've advised the top brass this case has no merit and they'll happily fight it.
For a cool $100 million + in legal fees :)
So for once HP did the smart thing.
Legal Department probably refused to say point blank that HP would definitely win (because only dumb legal departments do that), but said it would be somewhat expensive to fight. Probably less than $50M unless they are overpaying outside counsel.
Decision was probably motivated by non-legal factors. $100M is a drop in the bucket compared to cost of negative publicity on stock valuation. $100M is also a very small amount to pay to resolve outstanding litigation in anticipation of due diligence on substantial acquisition (e.g. of HP) or merger.
Not quite. Job count is increasing (although we need to work on the *quality* of those jobs). The deficit is down. The economy is recovering from the recession that began under GWB. We're slowly extricating ourselves from the middle east (though by no means fast enough). The POTUS isn't seen as a posturing buffoon and figurehead throughout the rest of the world, nor does he grope foreign leaders. The Patriot Act is starting to sunset and whether the current PTB like it or not, Americans are aware of NSA misconduct and willing to hold their elected officials accountable at the ballot box.
Our current POTUS is far superior to GWB, and it's been reflected in his policies. His only failing has been an unwillingness to engage in serious conflict with a party that sees him as illegitimate for no reason beyond the color of his skin, and to try to re-enact things like glass-stegall, worker protections, and a sane regulatory infrastructure.
But I suppose you'd see those efforts as bad, anyhow....
This company is really a joke. Instead of creating innovation or making products, year after year they're just making headlines for doing stupid things.
So HP are paying out even though they state the case has "no merit". Are they hoping that the other "no merit" case (against former Autonomy owners) will bring fruit?
Yeah gridlock!
The GOP isn't much better. The best we can do is gridlock them against each other.
The key moment is when the currency crisis hits. When that happens the federal government MUST BE GRIDLOCKED or we are all screwed.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'