HP quashes investor unrest, looks to servers for salvation

March 21, 2013

Shareholder meetings are almost boring affairs, but today, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, HP’s Board quietly prevailed in several intense battles, including the preservation of its very own membership. The overall message: Let's look forward to the future, and leave our checkered past behind. HPHP's shareholder meeting seemed design to project stability. There’s plenty the Board would no doubt like to put behind it, including six quarters of declining profit and revenue . Though HP isn't doing quite as badly as expected, sales of its bread-and-butter PCs, workstations, and printers, continue to fall. As a result, shareholders have agitated to oust two of HP’s Board members along with its outside auditing firm, Ernst & Young. And many continue to question the company’s 2011 acquisition of Autonomy, and a Department of Justice investigation isn’t helping. Meanwhile, back at the garage, HP is embroiled in a lawsuit with Oracle over server support. Against this ragged backdrop, HP’s Board seemed extra-determined to project both sober responsibility and immense excitement. It made no mention of its declining businesses, instead pointing to new opportunities in IT and servers for the burgeoning big-data revolution. In addition, none of the controversial shareholder proposals prevailed. Shareholder drama fizzles The biggest flap concerned a campaign by CtW Investor Group to vote down two of HP’s current Board members. CtW blamed John H. Hammergren for his role in the extremely expensive Autonomy acquisition. It also targeted G. Kennedy Thompson for his role in maintaining the high non-audit fees paid to Ernst & Young, which it saw as a conflict of interest with the firm’s role as the company’s financial auditor. When the shareholders voted, however, each Board member received over 50 percent of the votes needed to stay on team HP, and the retention of Ernst & Young as HP’s outside auditor was favored by a very high margin of over 84 percent. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2031455/hp-quashes-investor-unrest-looks-to-servers-for-salvation.html#tk.rss_all