Meg Whitman: We wuz robbed!

[DCal430]

Regardless of the fact the HP should have known it was over paying, the Big 4 accounting firms fucked up real bad, and they need to pay as well. They are all guilty of gross incompetence or fraud. There is no way around it.

 

[Lanyap]

I guess I need to start drawing my HP pension before they screw it up.

 

[waggy]

They hired "good" CEO's. And paid them a lot of money.

i disagree. Hurd was good but they ran him out (even he is debatable). Then Hired Leo Apotheker who had NO experience running a hardware business. he went on to make a lot of very very bad decisions.

then they hire Whitman who i don't think is to much better. sure she did great at EBAY but at that time it wasn't that hard.

 

[Ricochet]

Regardless of the fact the HP should have known it was over paying, the Big 4 accounting firms fucked up real bad, and they need to pay as well. They are all guilty of gross incompetence or fraud. There is no way around it.

Those accounting firms are akin to the home appraisers at the height of the housing boom. If you're going in expecting to pay <insert overpriced figure> then by all means they're going to come back with a figure resembling that. To do otherwise requires actual investigation/work. This country is full of those fancy suits with the prestigious title looking to do as little as possible while still collecting an enormous cut.

 

[lOl_lol_lOl]

I am not American but something about Whitman is definitely weird. How do you fail to become governor of California after spending over 300 million dollars? Where I live you could take over the country with that kind of cash.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Hewlett-Packard Revisited: Lowest Tech Valuation in 20 Years

My experience is that "good" CEOs don't drive the company valuation to record lows... CEO Fiorina drove the stock price down 41%, CEO Apotheker drove the stock price down 40.6% Mark Hurd escaped with his reputation intact.



When I worked in the Computer Industry (mid-80s), HP was considered a leader in the industry and a great company to work for. See " the HP way." It was a company founded and lead by engineers.

In 1999, the board decided to make Carly Fiorina with her Medieval History undergraduate degree and Marketing Masters CEO.

She spun off the soul of the company which went on to become Agilent Technology.

Before she was fired six years later, HP had lost half of its market value.

As Forbes put it:
"
... Carly Fiorina took a company long on innovation and new product development and turned it into the most outdated industrial-era sort of company."

Today CEO Meg Whitman has HP "... on the same road as DEC, Wang, Lanier, Gateway Computers, Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics ... And that&#8217;s lousy for investors and employees alike."

Of course, Meg Whitman will do her best to grab as many millions for herself as she can while she continues to both make billions of dollars of HP equity and thousands of jobs disappear.

That's not magic, that's mediocrity.

Uno

I am so glad I bailed when the Compaq/HP "merger" was announced. I've got friends who work for HP, and many of them are overpaid for their positions and especially qualifications (the friends I am talking about have no degrees). Not that a degree makes you qualified, but more and more companies require them for professional positions.

Anyway, instead of preparing themselves for the inevitable layoff by getting degrees, they just try hopping to the next overpaid position with an inflated title within HP when their positions are on the chopping block. They're eventually going to run out of places to go and they're going to have big trouble landing a job elsewhere. I mean, one friend claims they didn't get pay raises for several years and HP stopped contributing to their 401Ks for a time. Why would you stay at a company like that?

 

[lothar]

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/autonomy-founder-says-hp-allegations-dont-add-121922322--finance.html

 

[techs]

Meg Whitman is the most overated CEO since Donald Trump.

Vice President of Strategic Planning for Disney in the 80's? With the wiring of America for cable and the desperate need for programming how could she fail to do well with the largest library of programming in the world?

CEO of Ebay? The best idea on the internet? Check. Was it her idea? No. What is she famous for? Buying PayPal? How the hell did Ebay not realize a credit card processor would be the perfect idea and complement Ebay? Well, she didn't. Instead she had to buy Paypal

 

[MaxPayne63]

I am not American but something about Whitman is definitely weird. How do you fail to become governor of California after spending over 300 million dollars? Where I live you could take over the country with that kind of cash.

Once you've spent enough money so that a large number of voters know your name and whether you prefer to wear an elephant or donkey mask while pillaging the state/country the marginal gain for any further spending is extremely low.

 

[Lonyo]

Regardless of the fact the HP should have known it was over paying, the Big 4 accounting firms fucked up real bad, and they need to pay as well. They are all guilty of gross incompetence or fraud. There is no way around it.

Nope, it seems like it might be that what Autonomy did was within the rules of IFRS.
HP use US GAAP, which is quite different, and IFRS allows a lot of choice in some areas.

What would be absolutely hilarious is if HP overpaid because they didn't understand the difference between US GAAP and IFRS. I hope that is the case, because it would make them look so absurdly incompetent it would be unbelievable.

AllThingsD has a good overview, although it would be good to see someone go through it in detail (that might require more in depth access though).
http://allthingsd.com/20121123/autonomy-founder-lynch-blames-accounting-standards-in-hp-flap/

Basically Autonomy used every legit and available trick in the book to make choices allowed under IFRS which resulted in the presentation in the financial statements, which was presumably allowed under the IFRS rules (assuming that there was no fraud).
Which would mean HP were guilty of gross incompetence to fail to understand that was the case, and would probably be liable to a lawsuit from shareholders due to complete incompetence. Which I hope is the case, because it would be funny to see HP make a big deal out of this, blame Autonomy, and then get sued themselves for screwing over their own shareholders.

 

[Dari]

Nope, it seems like it might be that what Autonomy did was within the rules of IFRS.
HP use US GAAP, which is quite different, and IFRS allows a lot of choice in some areas.

What would be absolutely hilarious is if HP overpaid because they didn't understand the difference between US GAAP and IFRS. I hope that is the case, because it would make them look so absurdly incompetent it would be unbelievable.

AllThingsD has a good overview, although it would be good to see someone go through it in detail (that might require more in depth access though).
http://allthingsd.com/20121123/autonomy-founder-lynch-blames-accounting-standards-in-hp-flap/

Basically Autonomy used every legit and available trick in the book to make choices allowed under IFRS which resulted in the presentation in the financial statements, which was presumably allowed under the IFRS rules (assuming that there was no fraud).
Which would mean HP were guilty of gross incompetence to fail to understand that was the case, and would probably be liable to a lawsuit from shareholders due to complete incompetence. Which I hope is the case, because it would be funny to see HP make a big deal out of this, blame Autonomy, and then get sued themselves for screwing over their own shareholders.

I don't think they or their accountants are that stupid. Autonomy was based in the UK and HP knew that...

 

[Lonyo]

Apparently people have already filed a class action suit against HP regarding the Autonomy purchase.

 

[theevilsharpie]

I don't think they or their accountants are that stupid.

This is HP we're talking about.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Meg Whitman is the most overated CEO since Donald Trump.

Vice President of Strategic Planning for Disney in the 80's? With the wiring of America for cable and the desperate need for programming how could she fail to do well with the largest library of programming in the world?

CEO of Ebay? The best idea on the internet? Check. Was it her idea? No. What is she famous for? Buying PayPal? How the hell did Ebay not realize a credit card processor would be the perfect idea and complement Ebay? Well, she didn't. Instead she had to buy Paypal

Yet people act like people like her are geniuses. Welcome to America, now please pay attention.