There’s no doubt which recent news story stirred up the biggest waves in the channel: the departure of Mark Hurd, HP’s CEO, chairman and president. For a while Hurd had been at the top of the IT food chain. He had built HP into being the biggest IT company in the world, axing thousands of jobs along the way, snapped up and merged businesses such as EDS and Palm, consolidated operations – all the while keeping shareholders happy in the process.
But, and it’s quite an important but, he also drastically altered the ethos and culture of the Hewlett-Packard that we all knew. The end was swift and brutal. An investigation into a complaint of alleged sexual harassment, brought against Hurd by Jodie Fisher, found irregularities in his expense claims.
The investigation found that Hurd had a close relationship with Fisher, who worked for him on a freelance basis between 2007 and 2009, but it discovered no evidence of violations of HP’s sexual harassment policy. However, the probe also revealed that Hurd had given Fisher compensation or expense reimbursement “where there was not a legitimate business purpose”.
He had also submitted inaccurate expense reports intended to conceal the relationship from the board.
Hurd settled the sexual harassment claim with Fisher privately, but the expenses issue prompted the board to ask for his resignation. In a statement, he said it had been “a painful decision for me to take after five years at HP, but I believe it would be difficult for me to continue as an effective leader and I believe this is the only decision the board and I could make at this time”.
Fisher issued a statement saying she hadn’t wanted Hurd to lose his job over the matter and denied there had been an affair or intimate relationship between them. When it emerged that she had a background as an aspiring actress who had appeared in a few soft-porn movies (with titles such as Sheer Passion, Body Of Influence 2, Silk Stalkings and Intimate Obsession) the story took on an even more salacious turn. As an aside, I wonder if there was a surge in sales or rentals of some of those titles in the immediate aftermath of the story? The media were agog. Here was a story that had most of the ingredients that readers and viewers feast on: sex and money. What more could they have asked for?
Well, how about the CEO of another IT company – once well-known for his playboy lifestyle – publicly riding to the defence of Hurd? Yes, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison seemingly felt he had to get involved, sending an e-mail to The New York Times claiming the HP board had “just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago”.
Ellison went on to accuse the board of failing to act in the best interest of HP’s employees, shareholders, customers and partners – and of “cowardly corporate political correctness”. Whatever the merits of Ellison’s claims, one can’t help feel there were a quite a few HP employees, and even more ex-employees, celebrating the exit of a man who had cut thousands of jobs and who last year cut all employees’ – including the directors – but raised his own bonus.
Tales were rife on the web concerning Hurd’s ousting, with employees claiming he had torn the heart and soul out of the company. One indication of his unpopularity was the fact a blog called ‘F*** You Mark Hurd’ was seventh in Google’s search rankings.
As for Ellison’s intervention, if anything, it served to reinforce the perception that there might be some kind of blessed circle of CEOs who believe their value is so intrinsic to a company that they should not be constrained as rigidly by rules and regulations as their employees.
As a number of people pointed out, if an HP employee had been found filing irregular expenses, they would have been sacked – but Hurd was allowed to resign and walk away with a payoff equivalent to about EUR*35 million. One law for the staff and one for the bosses? The HP board is now looking for a successor to Hurd. Fisher is reportedly working as a branch manager for a staffing agency in New Jersey run by her mother. Life goes on.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers