HP Board Sued Over Hurd Departure 136
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.
You don't get it (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.
HOW much of a golden parachute? (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.)
boards and ceos scratch each other's back (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you radically underestimate how many people on here will collect $400 000 over their lifetimes, in savings etc. I'll grant that not a lot of people will get a single payout like that, but then, I bet some will when they sell a house to move somewhere cheaper.
I also expect that there are some really rich fucks that read slashdot who will see 40 million in their lifetimes. Though I can easily believe that none of them will read this particular thread.
Re:HE WAS NOT FIRED FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you radically underestimate how many people on here will collect $400 000 over their lifetimes, in savings etc. I'll grant that not a lot of people will get a single payout like that, but then, I bet some will when they sell a house to move somewhere cheaper.
I also expect that there are some really rich fucks that read slashdot who will see 40 million in their lifetimes. Though I can easily believe that none of them will read this particular thread.
Woz qualifies as a really rich fuck who reads (and comments on) Slashdot. Although I'm not sure I think he's a fuck.
Re:You don't get it (Score:5, 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.
Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? (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.
Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think both Warren Buffett and Peter Drucker (ostensibly, two luminaries in the business world) have both railed against excessive executive compensation.
Warren Buffett was even booted off of several executive comp committees a few years ago for having this nebulous value.
Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? (Score:5, 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.
Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? (Score:3, Insightful)
CEO's are paid in ways other than just a salary.
The links I provided include in their figures these "other ways" that CEO's are compensated. While you could argue about the dollar amount of these forms of compensation, the companies that compile these sorts of data are fairly accurate in the present-day value of these alternative forms of compensation. Obviously, while his awards and salary may only have been $32k this year, I'm sure he is continuing to make money on compensation from prior years, whether it is through vesting or market appreciation of his options/grants/etc. Heck, even if he put $10 million of his compensation from last year into a savings account that paid 1% he'd still be making $100,000 a year off of it.
Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? (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.
I have one word for that ... (Score:3, Insightful)
SCO.