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HP revamps board; Change long overdue

By | January 20, 2011, 1:25pm PST

Summary: Hewlett Packard moved to shake up its board of directors amid the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd last year. A handful of former technology executives were named to the board.

Hewlett Packard on Thursday moved to shake up its board of directors amid the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd last year.

HP has suggested an independent review of the board’s decision with Hurd. And HP’s board has been under fire for years. As a result, Chairman Ray Lane moved to make a few changes.

According to HP, the new directors are:

  • Shumeet Banerji, CEO of Booz & Company;
  • Gary Reiner, former CEO of GE and a current special advisor to private equity firm General Atlantic;
  • Patricia Russo, former CEO at Alcatel-Lucent;
  • Dominique Senequier, CEO AXA Private Equity;
  • and Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay.

The new directors bring an interesting mix to the board. There’s private equity expertise, which will be handy for acquisitions, and a good bit of tech savvy.

Incumbent directors Joel Hyatt, John Joyce, Robert Ryan and Lucille Salhany won’t stand for re-election.

In a statement, Lane said the move will diversify the board and bring expertise.

The board shakeup arrives as HP plans to launch an investigation to Hurd’s departure.

Hurd resigned from his position at HP in August 2010 in what appeared to be a sexual harassment scandal but was scaled down after it was learned that Hurd did not violate the company’s harassment policy but did turn in some questionable expense reports.

The new investigation would be conducted by outside counsel, as well as directors who were named to the board after Hurd’s resignation - which would be new CEO Leo Apotheker, the former SAP CEO, and chairman  Lane, who is the former president of Oracle. The Apotheker-Lane combo is designed to make HP more of a software player.

Since Hurd’s resignation has been a real soap opera. The Hurd saga was one of the stranger tech events of 2010. First, there’s the unexpected Friday afternoon resignation over fudged expense reports and sexual harassment allegations. Then there’s the spectacle of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison defending Hurd and then hiring him. Toss in the TomorrowNow trial where Oracle tried to call out Apotheker and it’s been an interesting time for HP.

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Topics

Hewlett-Packard Co., Board, Mark Hurd, CEO, Board Shakeup, Corporate Governance, Harassment, Policies And Procedures, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Human Resources, Gender And Diversity, Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: HP revamps board; Change long overdue
marco5811 5th Sep
Previous was Jack Welsh who ruled for many years. Reiner was GE CIO based on a quick check of wikipedia. tipy
View in thread
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Meg Whitman on the HP Board?
htotten 20th Jan 2011
Can we bid for PC's and servers now?
0 Votes
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Gary Reiner CEO of GE?
7mgte 20th Jan 2011
Fact check please. Currently Jeff Immel (sp?). Previous was Jack Welsh who ruled for many years. Reiner was GE CIO based on a quick check of wikipedia.
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RE: HP revamps board; Change long overdue
IfUInsist 20th Jan 2011
@7mgte
That's correct--Gary Reiner was CIO (never CEO) of GE during the last five or so years of Welch's tenure as CEO. Among other duties, Reiner supervised GEIS (renamed GXS) and developed his relationship with private equity firm General Atlantic when GXS was sold in 2001.
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Corrupt?
cwr64 20th Jan 2011
There just can be no good reason for a wealthy executive to submit a questionable expense report.
0 Votes
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Thank goodness
Robert Hahn 20th Jan 2011
I'm glad to see that you agree that the rest of us peons have leave to pad things a bit. A little small-time graft is part of everyday life, eh?
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Daffy Ducks on the Titantic
piblogger 20th Jan 2011
Okay . . . I just could not resist responding to this piece: Will the real Daffy Duck please stand up! (http://wp.me/pydAP-1YW)
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HP is traditionally slow to change (reactive NOT proactive)
nacoll007 21st Jan 2011
Worked for HP for 10 years and they are notoriously slow when it comes to change. The shakeup is good and also the EDS acquisition, the hiring of Apotheker and Lane proves that they get it now, since they aspire to be a Software services player and challenge IBM
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First Carly.. and now PAT RUSSO ??
DaCheeze 21st Jan 2011
First Carly Fiorina, now Pat Russo ? Is HP on crack ? Both these women nearly ran Lucent into the ground. First Carly at Lucent with her "vendor-financing" debacle and then Pat with her criminal mismanagement of Alcatel-Lucent. The company is still trying to right itself after Pat and her cronies nearly ran it into the ground.

I cannot understand why the world still listens to these two incompetent individuals. All they have to offer the world is ineptitude.

Dump your HP shares now.
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Takeover
symbolset 22nd Jan 2011
Mata-Hari. Not good.
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RE: HP revamps board; Change long overdue
marco5811 5th Sep
Previous was Jack Welsh who ruled for many years. Reiner was GE CIO based on a quick check of wikipedia. tipy

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