The HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago. That decision nearly destroyed Apple and would have if Steve hadn’t come back and saved them. HP had a long list of failed CEOs until they hired Mark who has spent the last five years doing a brilliant job reviving HP to its former greatness.
In losing Mark Hurd, the HP board failed to act in the best interest of HP’s employees, shareholders, customers and partners. The HP board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false.
Nevertheless, the HP board then voted 6 to 4 go public with this sexual harassment claim against Mark because six of the directors believed that “full disclosure was good corporate governance”. Publishing known false sexual harassment claims is not good corporate governance; it’s cowardly corporate political correctness.
Those six directors caused HP to lose a nearly irreplaceable CEO. Those six directors who voted against Mark can try hard to hide behind a claim of “good corporate governance” but their decision has already cost HP shareholders over $10 billion… and my guess (is) it’s going to cost them a lot more.
The final insult was when the HP board (was) going to the press and suggested that Mark Hurd engaged in expense fraud over a few thousand dollars. This is not credible. Mark Hurd, like most other CEOs, does not fill out his own expense reports, so even if errors were made Mark didn’t make them.
What the expense fraud claims do reveal is an HP board desperately grasping at straws in trying to publicly explain the unexplainable; how a false sexual harassment claim and some petty expense report errors led to the loss of one of Silicon Valley’s best and most respected leaders.”
Since full disclosure seems to be the order of the day, I should disclose that Mark Hurd (is) a close friend and I am deeply offended by what just happened to him. If the HP board is offended by my comments… so be it.”
Larry Ellison. CEO, Oracle Corporation
Source: Oracle Corp.
MacDailyNews Take: Crazy Larry strikes again. Certainly, Mark Hurd is was no Steve Jobs. Trust us, Lar, they’ll soon find another guy or gal to oversee the peddling of wildly-overpriced printer cartridges.
Jodie Fisher is the real winner in this. No doubt she’s being given all sorts of new film & TV offers. Plus she probably scored multiple millions in her private settlement with sleezebag adulterer Hurd. I understand Hurd was almost universally hated by HP employees and that he single handedly destroyed thousands of HP employees and former employees lives through his engineered destruction of pensions and jobs. I hope his wife has the good sense to divorce him with Gloria Alldred as her attorney to make sure she gets HALF his undeserved fortune.
Hurd may be no Steve Jobs, but he’s also no Carly Fiorina, who utterly destroyed HP’s former prestige. When it was announced she had been fired/resigned HP employees broke out in celebration.
Hurd is no Steve Jobs but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t valuable. He was doing a far better job than past HP CEO’s. MDN, by your logic every CEO in the world is useless because they aren’t Steve Jobs. Think for a bit before you write your ridiculous takes.
It was under Hurd that HP began kicking the crap out of Dell. So in that regard, I think Hurd did do a very credible job also selling computers in addition to ink. I also agree with Ellison, (yee gads!!!), I think Hurd was a good CEO, and that this situation wasn’t enough to sink his ship.
Ellison is right; the HP board was cowardly and myopic.
All the emotions aside (I think that HP printer support, quality etc. has taken a dive over the last few years, but when it comes to buying PC boxes, I only buy HP as a result of good support and quality), Hurd has been an incredible asset for a HP that was lost in the woods. And I do not disagree with Ellison’s overall point about governance. The HP board acted irresponsibly and in a chicken shit manner. If it were not for Ellison’s almost maniacal hatred for all things MS and thus Hurd’s risk of losing a good friend, Hurd is the logical replacement for Ballmer at MS. Under Hurd I think you would see MS out of the consumer market and fully engaged in the enterprise. Better yet and with no loss of friendship, Ellison should find a place at Oracle for Hurd.
Wildly overpriced printer cartridges, and printers that don’t work reliably. Keep it up, HP.
wow – that is really weird
why would ellison make such an oboxious statement?
seems pretty unprofessional
he doesnt know what happened, just guessing
Jobs wasn’t CEO when he was forced out in 1985, and he wasn’t fired. He eventually resigned after losing a power struggle with the board and Sculley. But I suppose Ellison’s argument is still valid – they were short-sighted in letting him go.
It’s difficult for me to get worked up at all about Hurd. HP pretty much sucks no matter who is in charge.
Hey now, go easy on Carly. She did come up with that super nifty BLUE iPOD.
Remember? <crickets>
What really hurts HP is, the body of work left undone by Hurd.
He was brought in to restore integrity at the highest echelons of the company, or clean house as they say and then, set the agenda to move the company forward.
He hand-picked his staff and developed the chain of command. Together, they laid out the short and long term goals and strategies for the next five years out and all began networking, reestablishing relationships, amending and renegotiating contracts, renewing friendships in the hopes of restoring the faith of their partners and competitors alike.
Then there is the work left undone. If someone directly involved doesn’t step in and take the reins, Hurd’s replacement will scrap the whole lot, especially the visionary aspirations, because it’s not of his/her mind.
If second in command is moved up to the CEO slot, then HP will have to admit that Hurd was their best bet for a brighter future. If outside talent is brought in, they’ll want to do it there way and if the board is of a mind to let them, then it shows a vote of no confidence in Hurd.
Personally, I believe it’s the climate at HP that give its leadership the impression that there a bunch of good ‘ol boys and as long as you don’t get caught, pretty much anything is fair game.
It kind of reminds me of the Navy’s annual Tailhook celebrations in Vegas, which can be enormous fun, but it also encourages gentlemen to behave like the pigs that they are.
This is a lose/lose for both sides and Larry’s right, the board should take some time to reflect on their company’s policies and maybe next time the punishment should fit the crime.
You have to ask, what’s being rewarded here? Hurd gets trashed, and the girl hits the lottery.
He was sacked over expense filing which he doesn’t file.
He was sacked over sexual harassment which he didn’t do.
So, tell me again, FutureMedia, just WHY was this guy sacked?
MDN… peddling cheep PCs is not the core of HP’s business though you must grant them at least the respect they deserve in the desktop business as compared to Dell who spends next to zero dollars on R&D. HP’s real competitor is IBM in the server & services market, and they don’t have a real strong competitor in the printer business. That being said, I agree with crazy Larry on this one. Hurd had the vision and the execution control to save HP. On the desktop front the move to buy Palm was a perfect break from the main thing holding them back on the desktop… their deal with the MS devil. Apple should have bought Palm just to keep them away from everyone else. The additional IP for future protection of Apple’s own IP would have been worth the price of Palm. If you’ve followed the IP debate between Apple and Palm then you know that the iPhone steps on the toes of some of Palm’s IP as much if not more so than the reverse. Palm didn’t have the financial backing to get in that pissing contest with Apple. As you mentioned in the past Palm was takeover bait, they didn’t have the dollars to make the webOS a credible platform… thats not the case with HP. Make no mistake the webOS is a strong platform to build on. Hurd understood what the others did not. the fact that he is no longer running HP is a good thing for Apple… bad thing for HP.
Man! Is there any way to turn off auto-correct on an iPad? That feature is starting to annoy me. It’s not auto-correcting as much as it is anticipating and I don’t much care for its word choices, or the way it tends to sneak words in on you.
@ G4Dualie
Spot on
Agree with most sentiments here. Larry is crazy but he tells it like it is. He’s not Jobs best friend for no reason. The catered lunched for the board meeting probably cost more than the so-called expense filing mistake. Bub-bye WebOS. Hurd will bag away the $28M severance and make a lot more as the new CEO elsewhere within a year.
Yes, futuremedia, please provide references to back up your claims about why HP employees hated this man for his destructive behavior.
It seems to me that if things were as bad as you say they were, it would have made front page headlines, but I read several newspapers each day and this hostess-gate is the first bad news i’ve heard about the company.
Tangent>
I found a setting in the System prefs that allows you to turn off auto-correct.
@ Futuremedia-
HP had/has > 300,000 employees and like most pensions in today’s economic environment it wasn’t sustainable.
So Hurd was doing the fiscally prudent thing.
And Allred is a media cow.
Buy a clue.
“Mark Hurd is was no Steve Jobs. ” certainly not, but during his time, HP overtook DELL.
@MDN & MacBill
When you comment about “Wildly overpriced printer cartridges” it just shows how little you understand about their business and or your complete bias toward all things Apple.
Don’t get me wrong I am as big a Apple fanatic as the come though I am a little more grounded in the world of reality.
Are HP’s printer cartridges “Wildly overpriced” as compared to the competition? Are they in line with Cannon/other? Do they command a small premium as compared to their competition?
Does Apple command higher prices/margins than their competition?… Damn straight! Do they deserve them?… Damn straight!
HP’s printer business is just one of their segments and from what I understand a very well run and profitable segment. If your problem is with the entire market for ink refills that is another argument altogether. Remember it’s what the market will bear.
I was chatting with a fellow student at an adult ed class a few years back. He was a retired physicist. As an HP stockholder, he’d received shares in the spun-off Agilent. A short time later, he sold the HP stock, keeping only the Agilent, which he referred to as the “real HP”. (This was after the Compaq buyout.)
As one who still has a working (made in USA) HP-10C and later worked on HP workstations and servers, I could appreciate that sympathy. And a few months ago, I paid to service my old HP 4mv printer. (It was just the rollers.) Even the tech admitted not even HP makes them like that anymore.
But I have to agree with Ellison on this one. From a corporate management standpoint, giving Hurd the boot over this was foolish.
It does seem odd that Mark was fired for an affair (immoral, but not illegal) and 20K of expenses fraud when Wall Street executives pulled Mafia-style fraud in the billions and are still working today.
The stock drop ($10B) was 500,000 times the $20K loss in expenses! Why do we even expect that CEOs will have moral fibre. I am stunned, and thankful, when they DO.
Thank God for Judgement Day…
I like the statement made by Ellison. It certainly agrees with the objective opinions offered by others on news channels and business networks. Mark Hurd most likely made some unwise decisions, but not to the point where he should have been fired.
One other thing, just because it isn’t an Apple doesn’t make it trash. To wish ill-will on HP, as some have suggested, is to not think clearly about the consequences of real people involved. $10 Billion dollars lost is people’s pensions, and investments. I wish everyone well, all companies. People can vote with their wallets if they don’t like something, not see a company torn down by false accusations and ill-will.
I agree that it was a bit harsh for the board to basically force him out over this. However, the fact that they did makes me wonder what the REAL story might be. I have to think that if they felt the need to force him out and cite these things as the reasons, there’s probably more to the story and he may have done something truly unacceptable (and possibly criminal) and they’re essentially letting him walk away with a few lumps out of respect for what he did for the company, or something to that effect. Something just doesn’t add up. I’ve seen CEO’s and execs get away with far worse without any real repercussions. There’s more to the story than is being stated in the media.
Yeah Mark is no Steve, but he did a very good job compared to previois HP CEO’s, you could just for once show some minimal respect for a non-Apple guy.. he was fired for all the wrong reasons in the world.
HP has real competition in the small laser printer business, which they have managed to botch in a serious way. High school and college students know that if you want a decent small printer (and not an inkjet that is slow, expensive, and messy), you buy a Brother laser printer. They are likely to remember this experience when they head off into the small and large business world.
welcome to Apple, Mr. Hurd… as long as you’re not a suit.
@G4Duelie
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I don’t know if Hurd should have been let go or not.
But it seems to me that most CEO’s in the US today are overcompensated for their work. If this also makes them over exposed for perceived shortcomings, I can deal with that.
Sorry for posting again on this but found this in a NYT article from today and had to comment:
“At a presentation to the directors of H.P., the public relations specialist from APCO cited recent sexual imbroglios like the one that diminished Tiger Woods. The specialist cautioned that only 20 percent of top executives survive these types of allegations and then they usually end up leaving because of the weight of negative publicity.
He also warned that Gloria Allred, the celebrity lawyer representing Mr. Hurd’s accuser, would thrust H.P. and Mr. Hurd into a media nightmare.”
A couple of things: 1) Tiger was guilty of the accusations made, Mark Hurd was not. 2) A bad decision was made because fear of morally decrepit lawyer (I know, redundant statement – morally decrepit and lawyer), not because Mark Hurd was guilty of anything, except a bit of bad judgement – hanging around a opportunist Jodie Whoever, who has now put all legitimate sexual harassment claims under question and in jeopardy of being properly prosecuted. One wonders what she thought was going to come of this and her motive.
@ Amazin1
Tiger was guilty but Hurd was not?
How do you know? Where you there?
I guess Ellison was there too, since he’s so sure about everything.
The only reason for HP to say he was not guilty was to ease stockholders’ minds that he did not spend their money wrongly, which he probably DID.
I think Hurd should have been fired and the investigation should continue. That’s not the kind of character we need running a major company.
As to those comments that he brought HP back from the dead, WTF? Most of HP stuff still sucks and they still make a million different things, most of which is utter crap. Hurd or not.
Peace out.
two take aways for me:
1. there must be more to the story, what is really going on inside that Board (who are they anyway?).
2. more important, this throws HP’s WebOS plans up in the air. it will take them some time to find a new CEO starting from zero. and then that new guy will insist on a “fresh look” at HP’s WebOS strategy, to be sure whether to stick to it. even if they do, it adds up to a major delay – like 6 months – in moving ahead with it. one top Palm guy has bailed already, and more may follow. a serious loss of momentum is unavoidable.
Political Correctness = MARXISM
This has been proven.
Damn them!
HP Board are IDIOTS!
Larry is right on this one.
Hey Ellison:
If Hurd is so wonderful, let’s see if you immediately hire him to manage a major aspect of Oracle.
What’s that? Oh, not hiring now.
Yeah, whatever Larry.
You lucked into a huge contract with the federal government many years ago who does not have the best track record of working with the best technology. You rode that gravy train and still do. That’s what drove Oracle and what still drives Oracle for that matter. Drop the government business and what does Oracle look like? Pretty shaky and their acquisition of Sun has done nothing to improve that.
The US government and the US press is all over Oracle for overbilling billions to the government and Oracle is now under active investigation. Great job.
Larry, great way to move the focus away from Oracle’s bad behavior. Who writes a letter like that anyways?
Just obnoxious.
The Oracle ban starts today. The best tech companies don’t bother with Oracle anyways. Ask Google.
The fifty or so HP printers (Laser and Inkjet) that my school has are far cheaper to run than the Canons and far more reliable than the Epsons. (both of which we have as well). They don’t match up to the Zerox Phaser solid ink printers but come a good 2nd.
Although I buy Macs 99% of the time, if we need a PC, I would look at HP first, Lenovo 2nd and maybe Acer 3rd.
Some of the replies in this thread need backing up with hard evidence. In my 20+ years experience, HP gear has always been reliable, if not ground-breaking.
Dell, on the other hand…..
cant trust anyone, especially board members, they are in such fear they each should see a psychiatrist, so much fear they are willing to cut off a leg when the doctor already told them there is no real fear of infection….. IDIOTS…. do you think this could happen at a company like apple? or intel? NEVER, maybe it was meant to be, if Mark was more in control it wouldnt have came to fruition
Good for you, Larry !!!
Not many CEOs are willing to stick their neck out and speak their mind. I think you are right… but even if you weren’t, I admire you sticking up publicly for a friend.
MDN… I totally agree that Apple is GREAT… but everything else isn’t lousy by default.
Sausalito
Larry Ellison is right.
It’s over for HP.
Wait… HP’s Board investigated and found the allegations to be false? Is that really true? If so, and they still insisted (as a group) that Mark Hurd needed to go, then they are both cowardly and foolish.
Hey, Microsoft can use a new CEO; a guy who likes making acquisitions as a growth strategy would feel right at home at Microsoft. And Microsoft needs an outsider to come in an prune away all the non-performing dead-end nonsense.
The real HP is alive and well, and doing business under the name Agilent.
I’m no fan of HP- in fact, I think they suck. Their laptops make Dell’s look like Apple’s. However, it’s undeniable that they’re in better shape after the disastrous Carly run (her behavior since her HP career further illustrates this point).
Ellison is a funny guy with a big mouth- I would guess he is either competing with HP on something or is personal friends with Hurd as he is with Steve.
Did anyone else find this statement by Larry Ellison to be a little crazy: “The final insult was when the HP board (was) going to the press and suggested that Mark Hurd engaged in expense fraud over a few thousand dollars. This is not credible. Mark Hurd, like most other CEOs, does not fill out his own expense reports, so even if errors were made Mark didn’t make them.” ?
Oh, like secretaries just arbitrarily add to expense reports dinners, travel, and other things that shouldn’t be there. Where did the receipts come from that were included in the expense report? Did the secretary just pull those out of her arse and pad the bill for some unexplained reason? Bosses are the ones who give receipts to the people who do the expense reports. Nice try Larry, but whether CEOs fill out their own expense reports or not, they’re the ones held liable for what’s expensed. The arrogance of some executives is unbelievable. What an insult to his (and Mark Hurd’s) assistant.