Meg Whitman: We wuz robbed!

[theevilsharpie]

HP and AMD are a match made in hell. HP should go all the way and over pay for AMD to vertically integrate.

HP is one of AMD's biggest customers, and HP will eventually need a chip to replace Itanium...

:\

 

[Itchrelief]

lol and people say a Good CEO is not worth the money. HP is proof they are.

The problem is that the bad ones get paid pretty much the same.

 

[HomerJS]

Is this a good time to get a deal on an Envy?

 

[DaWhim]

Fat sloths like HPQ buy up companies for lots of money so that Middle managers get bonuses, new VPs get minted. (BTW write downs on goodwill are over 18billion now, dont forget the EDS stinker)

I hated HPQ since the day they announced buying EDS. i was shorting EDS when it happened. EDS jumped from $18 to $24

 

[techs]

HP to buy Myspace?

 

[unokitty]

lol and people say a Good CEO is not worth the money. HP is proof they are.

Unfortunately, its also proof that the bad ones get paid as much as the good ones...

There used to be a trust that organizations would pay well for outstanding performance while mediocre performance will not be as well rewarded.

Unfortunately, that trust is broken. Witness Meg Whitman on the Autonomy fiasco. Opps, 8 billion dollars of the shareholder's money just vanished. Wasn't my fault though. And opps, everyone responsible is already gone.

Ignoring the fact that she was part of the HP Board that approved the purchase.

The woman has no shame.

Uno

 

[Andrew111]

This. Some of you dunderheads blaming Meg or saying she should have known need to understand how business works. Companies pay these "experts" millions of dollars to provide them with due diligence. It's not like Meg is looking at the books. If the experts didn't see it or say they didn't see it, then why is Meg at fault?

Are you seriously defending the head dimwit (Meg) and the HP board? HP failed MISERABLY in doing due-diligence prior to the acquisition. Meg was a part of that board at the time so shares in the blame. There were very valid concerns about Autonomy's business practices before this acquisition was made...yet HP made an astronomical offer to Autonomy. This is the kind of due-diligence that board members could do....it didn't involve diving into the books. You look at Autonomy's shady business practices and why it was so desperate to sell...you ask QUESTIONS and don't just vote yes because Apotheker thought it was a good idea. There were many signs this acquisition wasn't going to turn out well:

"Something smelled bad about it from the beginning," said 451 Research analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe, who has been following Autonomy since the company went public in 1998.

Autonomy, which was based in Cambridge, England, had been known for a "dog-eat-dog" sales culture that drove employees to do whatever it took to hit their quarterly targets or risk incurring the wrath of CEO Mike Lynch, Pelz-Sharpe said. "It was never a happy company," the analyst said. "It was always a place where people were frightened to speak out."

By the spring of 2011, Autonomy was desperately seeking a buyer, according to Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison, whose company has become a bitter HP rival. In a series of statements last year, Ellison said Lynch and investment banker Frank Quattrone tried to persuade Oracle to buy Autonomy. The most serious pitch came in an April 1, 2011 meeting, according to Ellison, who described Autonomy's asking price as "absurdly high."

Mark Williams, a finance professor at Boston University and a former bank examiner for the Federal Reserve, called HP's accusations against Autonomy "due diligence deflection".

http://www.13abc.com/story/20152346/hps-autonomy-deal-highlights-pattern-of-bad-ideas

 

[Phokus]

Heh, CPA is a true conservative. The buck stops at someone else but the bigshot CEO at the top.

 

[Ns1]

Heh, CPA is a true conservative. The buck stops at someone else but the bigshot CEO at the top.

Well the CEO did hire 4 accounting firms who failed miserably.

 

[Andrew111]

Well the CEO did hire 4 accounting firms who failed miserably.

Apparently Oracle knew not to buy the Autonomy turd and realized it was absurdly overpriced.

Interesting read about Autonomy's attempt to sell to Oracle (including the powerpoint slides)
In another slide we see Autonomy’s revenue and enterprise value as of January 24, 2011 — less than six months before HP’s acquisition — converted to U.S. dollars and compared against other notable software companies. Autonomy is valued at about $5.7 billion, or a little less than six times revenue. Six months later HP would pay nearly twice a much, which struck pretty much anyone paying attention as odd if only for the timing of the deal. Now HP says it paid about $5 billion too much for Autonomy and that amount lines up almost exactly with the increase in Autonomy’s valuation from this point. Coincidence? Maybe. But, interesting!

 

[Ns1]

Apparently Oracle knew not to buy the Autonomy turd and realized it was absurdly overpriced.

Interesting read about Autonomy's attempt to sell to Oracle (including the powerpoint slides)
In another slide we see Autonomy’s revenue and enterprise value as of January 24, 2011 — less than six months before HP’s acquisition — converted to U.S. dollars and compared against other notable software companies. Autonomy is valued at about $5.7 billion, or a little less than six times revenue. Six months later HP would pay nearly twice a much, which struck pretty much anyone paying attention as odd if only for the timing of the deal. Now HP says it paid about $5 billion too much for Autonomy and that amount lines up almost exactly with the increase in Autonomy’s valuation from this point. Coincidence? Maybe. But, interesting!

and the question that I would ask is - why didn't any one of the accounting companies catch this, as that is their JOB.

I get that the CEO gets the shaft because at the end of the day it's her responsibility, but she did hire 4 accounting firms and they all failed miserably.

 

[BladeVenom]

lol and people say a Good CEO is not worth the money. HP is proof they are.

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

 

[Andrew111]

and the question that I would ask is - why didn't any one of the accounting companies catch this, as that is their JOB.

I get that the CEO gets the shaft because at the end of the day it's her responsibility, but she did hire 4 accounting firms and they all failed miserably.

You shouldn't be relying solely on accounting firms though. You have to take into account the company's business practices (not good...did whatever it took to meet sales targets), the culture (not good...employees afraid to speak out).

 

[Fritzo]

How the fvck you acquire a company for $10b and say the next year it was an accounting mirage worth only $1b is beyond me. This is going to be a fun story to follow...

$10,000,000,000.00

oops, we meant:

$10,000,000,00.000

 

[Ns1]

bah n/m

 

[Andrew111]

What is truly concerning is that Autonomy showed Oracle a valuation of ~$5 billion in those Powerpoint slides and that was 6 months before the HP acquisition....and Apotheker doesn't question why the valuation jumped significantly in the next few months? You don't need accounting firms to catch obvious issues like that in the first place...that's common sense and you have to get a satisfactory answer from Autonomy about the jump in their valuation.

 

[Lonyo]

It didn't necessarily actually jump significantly.
HP overpaid, they managed to pay a 64% premium on the share price, which may have already been pretty inflated. Which is quite the premium.

This is the same HP who recently wrote off a significant amount on another purchase, (EDS) and wrote down their entire Palm purchase.

Everyone said HP overpaid in the first place, now they are trying to save face somewhat.

 

[Dari]

That's not the point. They are supposed to be a tech company. They should be evaluating Autonomy's software, if it is solid, it if has market, if customers find it usable and valuable, if it strategically align with HP's product offering. They shouldn't be basing it on how much cashflow Autonomy is making. Larry Ellison is smart enough to know Autonmy don't worth $6B because he knows software, software industry, it's customer. But dumb HP management with no clue what they are buying paid $11B for that crap.

That's the problem with HP don't know what they are doing and base all decision on consultant reports, accountants reports, auditors report. That's what happens to bunch of failed companies. Bunch of moron on the top.

The problem with your argument is that it was a former SAP guy, supposedly someone who knows software, that did the deal. Apotheker worked for decades at sap. He sold the deal to HP's board so he supposedly knew what he was talking about...

 

[Andrew111]

The problem with your argument is that it was a former SAP guy, supposedly someone who knows software, that did the deal. Apotheker worked for decades at sap. He sold the deal to HP's board so he supposedly knew what he was talking about...

He had a long career at SAP but didn't last long as CEO of SAP...maybe HP should have pondered that one, lol.

 

[CPA]

Heh, CPA is a true conservative. The buck stops at someone else but the bigshot CEO at the top.

Hey, since your savior can't due anything wrong and it's always Bush's fault, we have something in common.

 

[FM2n]

Now imagine if she she ran California!

 

[techs]

Now imagine if she she ran California!

She looked over Californias finances and was so impressed she wanted to be governor.



wait, what?

 

[rchiu]

and the question that I would ask is - why didn't any one of the accounting companies catch this, as that is their JOB.

I get that the CEO gets the shaft because at the end of the day it's her responsibility, but she did hire 4 accounting firms and they all failed miserably.

Well you have to see through HP's bullshit. Many people put Autonomy's worth at $6Billion. Their asset worth like $3Billion. HP basically paid almost double. The stuff HP raised, mis-classification of revenue, posting revenue before it's realized are at best "questionable" accounting practice and not out right fraud, it will be debated for years to come. And while those accounting practice could have caused inflated valuation, it could never have doubled Autonomy's worth. Oh and by the way, Oracle and everyone else on the Wall St was using the same publicly available accounting info to value Autonomy at $6B.

Bottomline, HP and their board wanted to buy Autonomy at any cost because they were desperate to be somebody in the enterprise application space, but at the same time, they are clueless about the industry, the customer, the technology and basically everything they wanted to do. They failed, now they are trying to find some excuse to justified their incompetency.

Oh and the way they are handling this, basically killing off one of their key product while showing how clueless their board and management is, clueless in M&A, basically further showed what kind of messed up exec mgmt team they have up there.

 

[unokitty]

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

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’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

 

[Phokus]

Hey, since your savior can't due anything wrong and it's always Bush's fault, we have something in common.

I don't know what you're talking about, Obama is doing a fine job