Ex-HP CEO Hurd Pays $14 Million Oracle Pledge Fee 77
theodp writes "Valleywag reports that ousted HP CEO Mark Hurd is paying dearly to roll with Oracle, giving up millions of dollars to settle the HP lawsuit that threatened to prevent him from working at his new job. Hurd will forfeit about 345,000 restricted HP shares that he was given as part of his HP exit package, which had a market value of $13.6 million. In addition to announcing the truce against the backdrop of Oracle's OpenWorld conference, HP and Oracle also reaffirmed their vows to each other."
Re-affirm their vows? (Score:2)
Really? Are they uh.. well I didn't know, that they were so close. Married, as it were. I guess when two companies love each other..
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Really? Are they uh.. well I didn't know, that they were so close. Married, as it were. I guess when two companies love each other..
It got to me an ugly threesome when Oracle took Sun into the family home though. HP was no longer the manufacturer of the prestige exadata [oracle.com] server.
big picture (Score:4, Insightful)
14 Million isn't a whole lot if you look at the big picture. Sure, he's giving up 14 million to leave HP, but remember he left HP with ~$30 million severance, and has a salary of $1 million with a bonus cap of $10 million, and receives 35 million shares of oracle stock (cumulative) over five years which alone is worth at least $35 million dollars.
I mean, yeah, $14 million is a lot of money I wouldn't want to give up at my current pay rate, but over five years he stands to make $90 million dollars at Oracle, and doesn't have to collect unemployment.
What I could do with $just 1,000,000 (Score:5, Insightful)
I have always wondered what I could do with just $1,000,000. When I hear folks making millions per year, I rethink my strategy to enable me make just a million.
It has never worked! But I am not down yet. The trouble is I am closely getting to my fifties with almost no hope in sight and my mortgage still has 21 years left on it.
My investments need lots of prayer and luck. It looks like I might end up a 'dirty' old retiree. People like this man Hurd should be thankful to God for enabling the possibility for making millions come to light.
Re:What I could do with $just 1,000,000 (Score:4, Insightful)
God did not gave him a dime.
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Yeah! Just like Santa enabled the possibility for christmas presents!
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God did not gave him a dime.
I suppose that depends on your belief system. I don't believe in god but if he feels that god gave that guy a bunch of money to piss away then that's ok with me.
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I suppose that depends on your belief system.
No, it doesn't. Just because people believe in a god doesn't mean one is there.
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No man is an island. You are affected in every aspect of your life by everybody else.
His influence on your world is not good.
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And just because you don't believe in God, does not mean He does not exist.
Without concrete proof either way, both are valid, mutually exclusive hypotheses. Don't let your acceptance of one blind you to the fact that the other might be the one that is correct.
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Not OK with me, it prevents him from understanding why this guy as all this money and not him.
If he KNEW why instead of believing it's the way it is because some fairy decided "let it be so" then that would make one less sheep and social change would be closer. Cause he'd be pissed.
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Seriously. I mean, how do you get to the mental state that you give up 14 million in order to get into another job?
Regardless of the rest of the settlement or even the rest of his money, 14 mil would have me sizing up early retirement.
Re:What I could do with $just 1,000,000 (Score:4, Insightful)
'Regardless of the rest of the settlement or even the rest of his money, 14 mil would have me sizing up early retirement.'
And that's why you don't have 14 mil! ;^) You'd probably rather enjoy life in your own way (and have other interests) than only work at a job.
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Don't think that his pal Ellison isn't making it up to him.
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Don't think that his pal Ellison isn't making it up to him.
This is truth.
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Seriously. I mean, how do you get to the mental state that you give up 14 million in order to get into another job?
He will make a lot more than $14M before he retires from Oracle...
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No doubt. Under Ellison's wing he'll probably clear $14M in hookers and blow alone!
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Are you nuts? He will earn that $14M back (and then some) the first year he works at Oracle. In years to come, he will certainly make tens (if not hundreds) of millions more. A headline like "CEO parts with $14 million" shouldn't cause anyone to bat an eye, unless you are really clueless about how much they earn.
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Yeah sure.
But my point was that In that situation I would have long retired, well before 14m seemed like the sort of money you'd give up because you wanted another job paying more.
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Say that when you have $14 million to give up. It's like asking you to give up a $30,000 bonus to get another job making $60,000 a year... Money is relative, despite what many at the bottom think; the more you have the more you want and it never stops. I would have to say you are the exception and not the rule if you indeed do give up the prospect of many many millions in favor of "Retiring" with a few million. Sure it's easy to say, but those who do end up in that situation virtually never turn down mo
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No he doesn't.
The shares were forfeited back to HP, they have to sell them.
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When $14,000,000 is pocket change to you. That is how overpaid these CEO's are.
They are not normal, they have zero clue as to what the other 98% of the people on the planet live like.
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99.99999%
Not 98%.
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He's not giving up $14m, he's giving up HP shares worth $14m at the current share price. It's not clear how soon he is allowed to sell them, but given how much damage Carly did to HP, and that Hurd had only just stated to turn the company around, I suspect he is not confident that they will be worth anything like $14m in a year's time.
Oracle probably doesn't want him to have the shares either. If he owns $14m of HP, then he has a fairly strong incentive not to do anything while at Oracle that will caus
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People like this man Hurd should be thankful to God for enabling the possibility for making millions come to light.
The money is not what drives Hurd. At this point its about having power and control, being considered a higher class worker or member of society, that's what drives him, he's already wealthy.
Wealth drives the poor to work. Power drives the wealthy.
Politicians are perfect examples, Richard Burris is a perfect example, already a well established Chicago politician who didn't need the paycheck from being senator, he just wanted the senate seat to fulfill his power drive.
Re:What I could do with $just 1,000,000 (Score:5, Funny)
I always find it funny when religion people would thank God for their success. If they even did some research into their own religion they would know what God isn't the deity that would grant wishes and hand out things like success. If anything it would be the other party that does it (usually in return for souls and what not).
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That reminds me of a story I read about a woman who suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis for 20 years with no relief, although she tried every medications possible. One day her doctor gave her one of the new biological drugs and she got better and was walking around without any pain.
In the interview she thanked God for giving her the medication that freed her from the pain. I never did understand why she didn't blame God for the 20 years of suffering that preceeded the "miracle". People somehow react to God i
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"Religion was born when the first con man met the first fool." --Mark Twain
Start complaining about taxes? (Score:2)
I guess if you've already been duped by the special interests with the big pockets, you could already be doing that. Many middle to lower income people have been duped into dressing as a parody of native americans to throw tea into bodies of water as they march toward the poverty line.
don't sweat it (Score:1, Interesting)
On this globe, today, making these huge sums these media and business celebrities make..you can't get there without being a total asshole bastard. All those people are unscrupulous jerks, psychopaths. Those people are demons, evil.
If you value honesty and integrity...be happy with what you have.
I'm probably older than you, and also probably "make less money". I know I have turned down ways to make more money rather than compromise my position, even if it only applies to inside my own head/heart/soul.
To hel
Oh - good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, that he "renounces" all that dough - how many regular people have to work less to pay for the cream of the crop up there?
That's one text I'd like to put on a bumper sticker: How many people does it take to pay a C?O ?
Severance Packages (Score:4, Interesting)
It always seems a bit perverse that outgoing executives are rewarded so lavishly when being ousted for wrong-doing. Hurd (allegedly) sexually harassed a woman and he got a $14 million+ payday out of it. I'm not going to cry for him if he has to give it up.
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You realize, of course, that boards of corporations don't care about actual convictions, right?
It's not as if companies can't fire someone until after they're indicted, convicted and sentenced.
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Sexual Harassment is a crime, and unless/until he is convicted of it, he didn't do it, and there was no wrongdoing. ... legally.
Unless you think it's ethical for me to murder you as long as I don't get caught?
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No need to rely on judgment, brand the sucker guilty as sin,
A straw man yells, "Help! An Anonymous Coward is beating me!"
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On a bigger scale, when someone steals money from a financial institution, if it gets to become a criminal matter there's a lot of bad publicity, damage to the company's reputation for security, and so on.
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"Unless you think it's ethical for me to murder you as long as I don't get caught?"
Murder is the _unlawful_ taking of the life of another, not the _unethical_ taking of life. It's a legal jurisdiction, not an ethical one. It is not always unlawful to take the life of another person, so it would be up to a court to decide. So no, you would not have murdered me unless/until you were convicted of it in court.
It is certainly ethical to take the life of another under certain circumstances.
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Where I work, you certainly wouldn't be allowed to hang a bikini calendar on the wall, and that's no crime. (Although it probably would get the employer sued, and is therefore sort of defacto illegal).
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Actually, hanging a bikini calendar on the wall would probably qualify as "Hostile Environment Sexual Harassment," and in certain cases could very well be a crime.
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Actually, Hurd was ousted for fraud. The sexual harassment is unproven (and from what I've read, most likely untrue allegation), but his fraudolent behavior is more than bad enough to warrant the loss of confidence of the HP shareholders.
Also (Score:2)
I've started to wonder, just how annoying, obnoxious and asshole-ish do I have to be to get someone to pay me tens of millions to leave?
Because I'll study, I'll practice! Just tell me now, how irritating do I need to get that 35 million to have me leave the building is a good plan?
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I've started to wonder, just how annoying, obnoxious and asshole-ish do I have to be to get someone to pay me tens of millions to leave?
Because I'll study, I'll practice! Just tell me now, how irritating do I need to get that 35 million to have me leave the building is a good plan?
Very simple...When it will cost the company more to keep you.
AND they can not get rid of you cheaper than that.
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When you have a lot of money, you can be a target. We will probably never know if Hurd sexually harassed Fisher or if Fisher exploited Hurd's position to extort money and favors. It seems suspicious that Fisher sought financial compensation from Hurd rather than following the usual channels with HP's HR department...
However, all of that is irrelevant, because that is not what Hurd was ousted for (at least not officially). He was ousted for filing inaccurate expense reports. The problem with this is that
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Sure, you can become a target when you make a lot of money. But that's one more reason to trot out the old line about, "With great power comes great responsibility." Money = power, in this case. If you manage to get into a position where you're paid millions of dollars to do a job, you should be extra cautious about the decisions you make that could negatively affect you.
He filed inaccurate expense reports? Well, who CARES if it was provably intentional or not!? How hard is it to accurately fill out an
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Not really paying... (Score:2)
And of course, he is still paid handsomely on top of that anyways.
$14 million (Score:3)
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I guess that means he can have 28 chicks at once!
It's sad that I know what quote you are referencing. I need to get out more.
Vows? (Score:2)
"HP and Oracle also reaffirmed their vows to each other."
It sounds like a celebrity marriage on the rocks!
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Giving up his stock... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, he will have even less incentive to NOT hurt HP. The stocks might have given some incentive and/or conflict of interest when faced when challenging HP in any way. Now he can can freely use his ~*amazing*~ competative knowledge against them.
Interesting way to settle a lawsuit. I'm curious how this will play out during the next 10 years with government and large contracts.
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Especially now that he has motive. HP just sued the guy, after all.