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.
Re:You don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
But how are you going to get special offers for ink and other supplies?
WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE INK CARTRIDGES?
Re:You don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
My advice. If you have any inkling of hardware knowledge, download the PC Gamer Building Bible [warez-files.com], 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.).
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Isn't it easier to just nuke and pave? I've found it's safer, more reliable and faster to just reinstall the OS from clean media using the machine's license code.
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Easier, yes, but according to the agreement(s) you agree to when starting the PC for the first time that might invalidate the PC's warranty. That kind of greasy dickery is hardly beyond them.
Sorry that's just not true. Computer companies are bound by the terms of their warranties to make sure their hardware works. If you've installed another OS, or wiped what was there, they still have to troubleshoot and/or replace parts.
Re:You don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
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:You don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Here [hp.com] is the driver for an entry level multifunction printer. Look under "HP Deskjet Basic Drivers"
Thinking more of business grade devices? Here [hp.com] 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.
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This is very helpful!
Can I post here the next time I am having trouble finding a driver?
I'm currently using a SAMSUNG 610N.
it's frustrating because it assumes your I.P. address will NEVER change.
Of course a few time a year there is a power outage and the addresses change so then I have to manually tweak the driver with th new IP address.
Hmmm. Perhaps i need to put the printer and the router on a UPS. Of course then I might forget the fix.
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Unfortunately, my current router doesn't seem to offer fixed address as an option. Perhaps I need to replace it. It is fairly old (6 years?).
The computers are XP, Vista, and Win7.
They are fine- the printer is an issue tho it is easy to address when things reboot.
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Thank you. I'll give that a shot. It looks like the printer has a static ip setting.
Going to wait until I'm rested since I'll probably have to update the drivers one last time.
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If you are using windows XP (can't comment on other systems since I don't use them much on machines that need to print) then the manufacturers tools will likely autodiscover the printer initially but once you've installed it a "port" will be created pointing at the printers IP and the driver will be set up pointing to that "port".
So if you want it to keep working you need to get the printer onto a fixed IP (either by configuring a static IP on the printer or by configuring a fixed MAC to IP mapping on the D
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Protocols like Avahi, Bonjour, or whatever your platform of choice uses are great for initially discovering the printer, but to use this to dynamically generate a port every tim
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I guess I have a different perspective as a laptop user. I often print on different networks and whenever I do, I always browser for the nearest printer, select it, and press print. My OS caches the last few printers in a list, so I can easily select one (by name, not IP - the IP is rediscovered every time) that I've printed to before.
I don't really know what you mean by 'use this to dynamically generate a port every time the driver is loaded' - changing the IP address of the destination printer is jus
Re:You don't get it (Score:4, 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.
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This.
Drivers are usually around 30MB now, but the print software (usually needed to take advantage of scanners, faxes) is the bloat.
And I work there making those software packages.
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I once downloaded a ton of drivers to prepare to install my HP printer on ubuntu. I plugged the device in and braced myself for an hour+ of tedium and headache. Within half a minute, ubuntu autodetected the printer and printed a flawless test page.
HP is clearly doing something wrong with software. You can play market-will-bear tricks with ink and supplies, without screwing the driver/interface.
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That's why I wish you could install CUPS + gimpprint/HPLIP/etc. as a printer driver for windows and let it handle the rest. Linux printing used to be pretty painful, but for the last 5 years or so, it's been a walk in the park compared to the Windows printer driver nightmares I have been facing.
(things involving rebuilding the print spooler, USB Printing support, deleting certain registry keys and changing values for others)
With the same printers under Ubuntu, I just plug it in, add a new printer in the co
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)
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exactly. Hurd is on the board of Yahoo, and it is likely that other CEOs are board members at HP, or that HP board members are board members at other companies.
It is corporate incest.
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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.
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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.
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adam savage reads /. though i'm not sure if he has over 40 million.
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Actually, Adam claimed he didn't have $20k to put in a massive obsession of his (own his own dodo skeleton), and he also said [youtube.com] that he doesn't read slashdot comments, for the same reason he doesn't read the Discovery boards, as he doesn't "want to put himself up for that kind of abuse".
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while i could believe he doesn't read the comments, how could he not have 20k..
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Woz qualifies as a really rich fuck who reads (and comments on) Slashdot. Although I'm not sure I think he's a fuck.
You'll have to ask Kathy Griffin about that.
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Do you mean it will be un Hurd of.
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none of us here, likely, will ever see even 1/100 of that amount of money on our lifetimes.
You're off by an order of magnitude...1/100 of $40 million is $400,000. Even someone making $5/hour working full time for 40 years will make $400,000.
want honest ceo's? stop giving them a theif's booty for a paycheck.
Like the CEO of Citigroup, who earned $128,751 last year (source [cnn.com])? Or maybe you would prefer the outgoing CEO of Bank of America last year, who made $32,171 (source [cnn.com]). Of course, the outgoing CEO of BofA also got a nice package worth tens of millions of dollars on his way out, so that's probably a bad example.
The bottom line is that neither company has don
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CEO's are paid in ways other than just a salary. Even the ones who get a big fat yearly paycheck still tend to make even more off of stock options and such. To pretend that the CEO of Bank of America was living on 32k is silly.
And while it's true that $400,000 isn't that much over the course of a lifetime, I think the grandparent's comment was true in the sense that most people will never see a lump sum of anywhere near that. They certainly shouldn't expect it as a severance package if they lose their job.
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.
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also known as pump&dump.
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There's a simple solution to this, which I've described before. Hold the stock in trust and only allow it to be traded after a certain number of years, e.g. 10% of it per year (cumulative), so you can trade all of the stock awarded in one year after ten years. The company needs to be in good shape for several years after they leave for them to profit.
If you're going to hire sociopaths, you need to make certain that their interests align with yours.
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Hold the stock in trust and only allow it to be traded after a certain number of years, e.g. 10% of it per year (cumulative), so you can trade all of the stock awarded in one year after ten years. The company needs to be in good shape for several years after they leave for them to profit. :/
That would work if it wasn't for things like short selling and put options
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Actually, focusing on near-term benefit is the best case scenario. Offering stock options merely destabilizes the stock. In order to maximize the profit from your stock options you really want to drive the price down when the options are being granted and drive it back up when the options are being sold. Even with full disclosure and trading windows in place it is quite easy to time announcements (or stuff your sales channels or whatever) to get the effect you want. I invite you to track stock price aga
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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
Re:HOW much of a golden parachute? (Score:4, 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.
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He turned that company around.
I hate to defend the guy, but you have to admit that he knows how to make money [google.com]. True, he did it by bludgeoning the staff, but from a strictly Wall Street point of view, he was definitely worth the salary.
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They paid him a salary + stock options for what they got.
They paid him an additional $40M (plus stock options?) for conduct unbecoming.
Hurd saved them? (Score:2)
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.
Hurd came in at precisely the right time. Fiorina may have been hated at HP, but the Compaq merger was completely her idea, from top to bottom, and it's far more responsible for HP's market position than anything Hurd did. I didn't even agree with it at the time, but in hindsight, it accomplished exactly what she thought it would. And Fiorina has to be laughing her ass off right now about this.
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The average lifetime earnings [census.gov] of someone with just a HS diploma is about $1.2M. 1/100th of $40M is $400K.
Remember, Steve Jobs never even attained a Bachelor degree, and how much does he make? Bill Gates [wikipedia.org]? I don't know that either of them participate here on /., but Steve Wozniak does (or at least did within the last two years), and he didn't earn his Bachelor degree until 10 years [wikipedia.org] after founding Apple.
This may be a bit off topic, but you really need to be careful about using absolute, blanket terms, espec
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: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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here in the bay area, I have seen so few 'long term' ceos. ie, in one company for a long time. they all move around and even founders get bought out and move on. very typical here in the valley.
never met dave packard and maybe he was an ok guy; but the fact that you 'saw him serve hot dogs' is far from sufficient proof that he's not off stabbing some other corp guy in the back after the food is over.
I'm not saying that ceo's are all evil at the start; but the job *makes* you that way. I also don't belie
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His name was Dave Packard.
Dave Packard ?
Sorry, I have no idea who this Packard is...
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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.
Not to disagree with the rest of your post, but there is a reason very large shareholders (like founders, or family members of founders) pay themselves up to as little as $1 in salary. It's called tax-avoidance.
If you take Ross Perot for instance, I recall he was paying himself almost nothing in salary, but that's because he would have paid a much higher tax bill otherwise. Overall, I think the book "Millionaire Next Door" said that Ross Perot succeeded in paying only 6% of taxes from the money he was mak
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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.
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For 35 million dollars, I'll be willing to not cook the books, falsify expenses, or screw any contractors or interns. I'll even be willing to lose a few rounds of golf so their clients can somehow feel good about themselves. Hell, if they act now, I'll do it for 29 million.
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You better either get the beer up front or at least have a look at the interns first.
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The problem isn't that the money was given after the termination, but that it was agreed upon PRIOR to hiring Hurd and that the contract didn't stipulate a zero bonus clause if the termination was due to misconduct. Even then, boards can do stupid things like allow a "consensus" resignation which technically skirts the definition of a "termination" allowing the CEO to make off with the contractually guaranteed severance bonus despite the malfeasance.
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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.
1/100th of $40 million is only $400,000. Assuming you work for 30 years (most of us will work more) you'd have to make less than $14k per year to make less than that - WELL below the poverty line.
Just being pedantic for the sake of doing so ;).
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14k is well below the poverty line? Someone should have told that to me when I was making 10k/year...
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The poverty line is a defined number.
It was possibly a little off for the $14k value if you're single. In 2009 the poverty line in the US was defined at $11,161 per year for a single person. For a family of 4 it is $21,756 per year. If you were at $10k per year though, unless it was quite a while back, then you were indeed under the poverty line (assuming you're from the US - the figure varies by location).
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I'm from Canada, the poverty line is actually something to the tune of 15-30% higher here most of the time I believe.
Sadly it wasn't THAT long ago, on the other hand I don't miss it, but I wouldn't have considered myself poor at the time either... maybe I'm just better with my money than most.
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I have one word for that ... (Score:3, Insightful)
SCO.
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Frankly, I have about 1/2 of that in accounts now at 40. I plan on having about 1/20th of that by the time I retire
I don't know whether to channel math nazi or grammar nazi.
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Unless he plans to spend it all.....
Of course, he was referring to 1/2 of the $400k and 1/20 of the $40m.
this is backdoor regulation (Score:2)
the government can't tell public companies how to pay their employees and officers. but governments are huge share holders in public companies via their pension funds and are now using them to sue or force regulation that they can't via the legislature.
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What regulation are they looking to impose? It's not clear at all to me...
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paying employees bonuses or severance packages in this case
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Seems implausible. If you were a major shareholder, and you wanted to effect chance, you would, y'know, vote.
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Yes, but being a major shareholder is a legitimate position from which to have a say in how a company conducts itself. Maybe the problem is that governments should be prohibited from owning interests in public and private corporations.
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Also your "Third Position" mission Statement:
The American Third Position exists to represent the political interests of White Americans, because no one else will.
I guess this is the logical conclusion for the minarchist and bigoted parts of the Tea Party.
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I knew some doofus would bring out that line. lol. and it isn't even Tuesday!
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references to Tea party bigots, though in retrospect it appears as though you aren't tossing all Tea Party peeps in the same bucket. My apologies for the knee jerk. I'll have a doc check that out. heh.
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Personally I would love to see the bigots move to the "Third Position" and have the Tea Party or Libertarian Party proper replace the Republican Party. That might force the Democratic Party to actually be Social Liberal and follow New Keynesian policy instead of the bastardized economic policy both parti
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Maybe the problem is that governments should be prohibited from owning interests in public and private corporations.
Whether or not that is true, I think classifying a pension that covers people who happen to be government workers as "government" is a bit of a stretch. Pensions should have a fiduciary responsibility to the people who hold the pension, so any activity such as the lawsuit in the story should be driven by that responsibility, and should not be abused as a way for the government to interfere in private corporations. I haven't gone deep into the details of this particular case, but it seems like a legitimate
You say fiduciary, I say felatio, (Score:2)
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It depends on the company. Some companies are designed to self-destruct. The stock sky-rockets in value because that's what happens with high-risk companies, the directors bail before the shit hits the fan, the money then acquired is used to start up the next such company. Yes, there are companies that are designed specifically for this purpose. More often, it's a shell company that is not specifically designed to fail but does take on all of the really high-risk activities on behalf of the parent company.
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exactly. higher stock price generally affects long term positions and longer term options, so short dumps are that great of a benefit to persons paid in options.
Am I the only one... (Score:2)
Not a problem!! (Score:5, Funny)
Just replace Hurd with Linux!!
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Just as soon as it's finished.
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Hurd is working right now! (Score:2)
As I understood from TFA, they gave Hurd the boot. So, finally, someone is booting it, it's working!
Come on people, get it right! (Score:2, Funny)
For the last time, it's not HP/Hurd.
It's GNU/HP/Hurd.
The Hurd Mentality (Score:3, Funny)
GNU/Hurd???? (Score:4, Funny)
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Glad I'm not the only one who was immediately reminded of the "Duke Nukem Forever" of the Linux world.
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It was the only OS they could get to work with the very strange hardware in the director-droid brains.
Hey! (Score:2)
That's GNU/Hurd!
Oh wait.
Not the real story... (Score:2)
This is just an elaborate plot! (Score:2)
This is a plot by Richard Stallman to get GNU Hurd [wikipedia.org] back in the news again.
Slashdot needs a "business" section... (Score:2)
...for articles like this.
Suit will be thrown out quickly (Score:2)
The Michael Eisner -- Disney Company -- Michael Ovitz saga Here [wikipedia.org], was more egregious than this. The court held that the directors were within their rights to let Ovitz yank the rip-cord on his golden parachute. I don't see why this case would be different.
Extremely confused board of directors (Score:2)
"But we thought people wanted Hurd to be finished?"
He's not the worst HP CEO (Score:2)
At least the market capitalization of HP went down by about ten billion dollars for this departure.
Re:HE WAS NOT FIRED FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT! (Score:5, Insightful)
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The 1 billion gallons figure, distributed across 40 years and the population, works out to about 1/10th of a gallon per person per year.
harrumph
Wrong thread, dude...