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back to article Ex-HP boss Mark Hurd's $53m gold parachute approved by judge

A US judge has dismissed a shareholder lawsuit against HP's board of directors over its bumper severance payment to ex-CEO Mark Hurd. District Judge Edward Davila said investors had failed to prove that the board's approval of Hurd's big package was not in the company's best interest. Hurd, now president of rival Oracle, left …

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  1. GrumpyJoe
    WTF?

    Awarded for failure

    They really are a different breed up there aren't they? All sitting on each other's payment committees, all setting obscene rates for their pay structures, all covering each other's asses.

    While we below kill each other for scraps.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Amazing, the life of a CEO. Fiddle your expenses to try and get sex, resign before you get fired, and end up with a $53m payoff, and a new job from your tennis buddy.

    If I fiddled my expenses like that I'd be lucky to get away with being frogmarched out by security and made to pay it back out of my dole money.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, I mean how dumb is that, such a huge salary anyway before expenses added on, what did he waste it on, food or something? :P

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      1. Miss Lincolnshire
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        Linux

        Wasted? Never!

        You can't beat a nice fish supper.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re: "There's not been a company ever turned around by the fifth CEO on the job,"

    IBM was turned around by Lou Gerstner, who was its 7th CEO.

    Maybe HP just need to fire Meg and her successor, and the 7th person in the chair will do what Lou did for big blue and bring the company back from the brink to an IT powerhouse.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      "There's not been a company ever turned around by the fifth CEO on the job,"

      Not one who thinks they need to move : " from PCs to tablets"

      That didn't work last time, or are you as useless as the previous guy??

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: re: "There's not been a company ever turned around by the fifth CEO on the job,"

      Part of the problem is they are really just grabbing the money and not really giving two shits about the output of the company.

      Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were there from the start. So while Ballmer gets criticism he is at least passionate about the company.

      Steve Jobs was there from the start, he reluctantly left but his return transformed the company.

      I really question if you can really bring someone in from the outside and stick them at the top of a company. You would probably do better to get someone who has worked their way up a company to run it. They will have a deeper understanding of the company and actually have some loyalty too.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: re: "There's not been a company ever turned around by the fifth CEO on the job,"

        Maybe they should bring back Bill & Dave by proxy - I don't think a medium would make any worse a job of running HP than Hurd did.

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  5. Dave 15

    As ususal

    If you are rich and influential you can do what the f*** you like and your mates will all help you out. He was kicked out for fiddling expenses and so forth but is now in charge at Oracle... amazing... try getting a job as a software engineer if a software company kicks you out for something... At the 'top' the rules are different, the payouts incredible and normal morality missing totally. I wonder how much of the payout ended up in the judges back pocket?

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  6. Ramazan

    Was he so ugly that even his $53 millions didn't help him to get laid?

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    1. lotus49
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      He isn't that bad looking so he must really be a prize dick (like you needed me to point that out).

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  7. Pseu Donyme

    > "may appear extremely rich or altogether distasteful to some"

    Something sort of akin to a wee bit of not totally unlike that, yes.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What a system

    Rewarding criminals is really a sad example of where society is at.

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    1. lurker
      Reply Icon

      Re: What a system

      Don't think he's been shown to be a criminal?

      Creepy overpaid lowlife scumbag, maybe, but he was acquitted of the criminal charges.

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  9. The Godfather
    Pirate

    Who pays the ferryman??

    Who are the 'todgers' who set these pay and severance packages?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who pays the ferryman??

      They are negotiated with the board when hired.

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    2. spiny norman
      Reply Icon

      Re: Who pays the ferryman??

      The CEO says what he/she wants. In theory, the board should hold the CEO to account and ensure the remuneration package is reasonable. In practice, the board consists of people who get paid a lot to turn up for a meeting once a quarter, plus they are likely to have their heads in the trough at other companies. No one wants to derail the gravy train. In Hurd's case, he was chairman of the board at HP and wouldn't be encouraging them to reduce his benefits.

      The other group that could do something are the shareholders, but they are mostly large banks and insurance companies, who have CEOs that are also happy to be overpaid. So it's all aboard the gravy train and magnums of Bolinger all round.

      When a group of small shareholders try to do something like this, they get nowhere.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yes, he was a bad executive

    "the plaintiffs had failed to show that HP had suffered significant losses during Hurd's time as CEO or that he was a bad executive."

    Really? How about the misguided $1.2B purchase of Palm that happened under his watch, along with the $14B purchase of EDS that was the reason for a recent $8B write down? I'd say that although these losses came to fruition after he left, they were certainly a result of his decisions and so, yes, he was a bad executive.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What an absolute disgrace. Contempt for shareholders, contempt for employees and contempt for customers.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      It's the American way !

      This is how corproate U.S. commerce operates. Unscrupulous behavior is condoned by the U.S. judicial system and often the result of corruption of same by corporate interests. Hell even the Mafia has been able to buy judges for a mere $10,000. It is a monumental disgrace.

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