Top Preforming CEO fired for lying on his Expense Report

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The woman at the center of the sexual harassment claim that forced the resignation of Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd revealed her identity Sunday and said she is "surprised and saddened" that Hurd lost his job.

Jodie Fisher, 50, knew Hurd through her contract jobs with HP's marketing department from 2007 to 2009. She was paid up to $5,000 per event to greet people and make introductions among executives attending HP events that she helped organize.

Details revealed Sunday show that she has also worked as a saleswoman, an executive at a commercial real estate company, and as an actress.

She appeared in some racy R-rated movies in her 30s and most recently was on a dating show called "Age of Love," in which women competed for the attention of tennis star Mark Philippoussis. Her lawyer, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, said Fisher is a single mother who is "focused on raising her young son." Fisher repeated that she and Hurd never had a sexual relationship but neither she nor Allred would discuss details of the harassment claim.

That claim set off the chain of events that led to the discovery of allegedly falsified expense reports for dinners Hurd had with Fisher and culminated in Hurd's forced resignation Friday from the world's largest technology company.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/08/AR2010080800296.html?hpid=topnews

Zero tolerance strikes again. Is there such a animal as a corporate executive who does not fudge his/her expense reports? Damn nutty to fire a guy who turned the company around for that.

Let's make the corporate world like the political world, where good people don't want any part of it is some measure due to the personal abuse they would need to endure if they did. Ya, that's the ticket for fixing America.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 0 • Views: 15,968 • Replies: 149

Good. Liars should not win.

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@plainoldme,

Quote:

HP said Hurd lied about the identity of his dinner companions in his expense reports to conceal secret dinners with his apparent crush (who both sides say he didn't have sex with but who still sued him for sexual harassment anyway). Hurd's people counter that Hurd's secretary filed his expense reports and may not have known exactly who he was having dinner with (the reports are still his responsibility, obviously, but people do make mistakes). Hurd's people also counter that Hurd's expense reports sometimes DID list the woman as a dinner guest and that Hurd himself paid for other dinners with her where no business was discussed.

In a second allegation, HP also says Hurd had HP pay to fly the woman near to where he was staying even when she wasn't working for HP. That would be embezzlement if true, but Hurd's people deny that. They say in one of these instances, an event the woman was involved in was canceled at the last minute, after she had already made the trip.

So, what happened, exactly?

HP shareholders need to know.

If Hurd defrauded HP by submitting bogus expense reports to cover up a relationship or, worse, embezzled money by having the company fly his love-interest around on the company dime, Hurd should be fired for cause and not get a dime of severance.

If, on the other hand, Hurd has a good explanation for whatever happened, and the incorrect names on the expense reports were oversights by Hurd or his secretary, then he shouldn't have been sacked.

And given that his sacking has already cost HP's shareholders $10 billion, the Board owes shareholders an explanation of EXACTLY what happened here--including, if it's important in understanding the Board's logic--what happened with the mystery woman.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurds-people-are-denying-pretty-much-everything-hps-board-said-he-did-so-the-board-has-some-more-explaining-to-do-2010-8#ixzz0w46kyvCT

Actually is walking check was $12 million cash and $16 million stock, so we should not feel too sorry for him, but WTF was the HP board thinking? This zero tolerance disease is destroying our ability to function.

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Quote:

H.P.’s top executives on Sunday said they would no longer discuss Mr. Hurd’s situation and vowed to find a new chief executive to keep the business running smoothly. “We are not going to slow down one bit,” said Cathie Lesjak, the chief financial officer and interim chief executive.

But turning the page on the scandal will not be easy. While Ms. Lesjak maintained that investors remained confident in the company, H.P.’s share price tumbled 10 percent on Friday as word of Mr. Hurd’s departure rippled through Wall Street.

Analysts had come to view Mr. Hurd as a stabilizing presence who galvanized the formerly chaotic company, and as the glue that held a complex organization with more than 300,000 employees together.

They saw him as having a knack for finding new areas where H.P. could lower costs, and for maintaining order among the top executives. And Mr. Hurd led the company’s charge past I.B.M. as the top seller of technology
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According to his peers, Mr. Hurd has set a high bar for any successor. “He has done such a brilliant job at H.P.,” wrote Lawrence J. Ellison, the chief executive of H.P.’s partner and rival Oracle, in an e-mail. “He will be very hard to replace

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/technology/09hp.html?hp

GREAT move HP!

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Zero tolerance strikes again. Is there such a animal as a corporate executive who does not fudge his/her expense reports? Damn nutty to fire a guy who turned the company around for that.

Let's make the corporate world like the political world, where good people don't want any part of it is some measure due to the personal abuse they would need to endure if they did. Ya, that's the ticket for fixing America.

Yes, there is such an animal as a corporate exec who does not fudge his expense reports. I'm surprised you are giving a pass to someone, a very well paid someone, who was stealing from his company. The guy gets paid eight figures and he is stealing from the company? At my workplace, stealing from the company -> fired. That's it. Sexual harrassment gets you counseled and a warning that it better stop immediately. Lack of performance might get you a performance plan with the threat of firing if it doesn't turn around. Stealing gets you fired. It doesn't matter if you lift a tool from the machine shop or falsify your expense report. Theft is not an accident. Do you really think that the ticket for fixing America is looking the other way at petty theft and graft or that insisting that someone be honest as terms for employment is subjecting someone to "personal abuse"?

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@engineer,

Agreed. Most all companies now have detailed "ethics" requirements that cover everyone from the CEO down. A CEO is hired by the board and is dismissable based on several levels pof performance or non-performance. To call this "zero tolerance" is merely a copout of how companies rule themselves. IF he wasnt fired (Or severely punished by demotion or penalty) then the entire ethics requirements are meaningless.

Noone is above a law. I think HP will do fine and this will serve as a neat object lesson. Most all the things hes gotten credit for were actually initiated by the previous CEO who also quit under a veil of smoke

Course, there could have been some real goings on beneath all the "expense report" stuff. Things that would really rock the business world.
Hurd was like Cliff Lee. The Phillies got rid of him, they are really beating themselves up for doing it, but they are managing to get it together without him.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

As an accountant who worked in auditing, I agree with farmerman that rules must be followed by everyone working for the company; there can be no exceptions or rules have no meaning.

The company could very well have set up some form of benefit for the CEO that allowed him to make those charges, but they didn't.

Last I heard about Hurd's performance, the actual increase in profit was gained through purchase of other companies, reducing HP workers, and the real HP gain was around 2%.

I'm not sure about farmerman's claim about the credit Hurd gained that was implemented by the previous CEO.

We must blame the board of directors for these obscene golden parachutes when their real performance doesn't dictate them. That money would have been better spent rewarding most of the HP workers, and retaining more workers at their jobs.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

We must blame the board of directors for these obscene golden parachutes when their real performance doesn't dictate them. That money would have been better spent rewarding most of the HP workers, and retaining more workers at their jobs

reports are now that the previous reported $28M is actually low, it might be closer to $40M.

I am a blue collar guy, a lot of the time I have been a union guy so I have no experience with expense reports. I have however always assumed that everyone plays with the truth when filling them out.

2 Replies

For what it's worth, I agree with the above 3 posters. A top executive has to play by the rules and when the rules are broken, the top executive is accountable..

In this case, he was caught on his business standards. There wasn't much evidence for him to leave on the sexual charges. That may or may not have led to something more.

There is more to a business than cutting costs and making acquisitions. The company must also grow through innovation and new products. That will be the challenge of the replacement.

Hawkeye's claim that Hurd was "fixing America" is somewhat flawed.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

I am a blue collar guy, a lot of the time I have been a union guy so I have no experience with expense reports. I have however always assumed that everyone plays with the truth when filling them out.

I wonder if blue collar folks routinely think this; I wouldn't doubt it. The truth is that gaming your expense report is a fast way to the unemployment line.

1 Reply

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

hawkeye10 wrote:

I am a blue collar guy, a lot of the time I have been a union guy so I have no experience with expense reports. I have however always assumed that everyone plays with the truth when filling them out.

I wonder if blue collar folks routinely think this; I wouldn't doubt it. The truth is that gaming your expense report is a fast way to the unemployment line.

No different for the blue collar guy who take the toilet paper home or thinks that a few pencils will not be missed.

1 Reply

@Intrepid,

Quote:

No different for the blue collar guy who take the toilet paper home or thinks that a few pencils will not be missed

Which is how it goes of course.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
No different for the blue collar guy who take the toilet paper home or thinks that a few pencils will not be missed
Which is how it goes of course.

Then why were you surprised that the corporate world would be any different?

1 Reply

@Intrepid,

Quote:

en why were you surprised that the corporate world would be any different?

I dont take because it is a point of honor with me, however in the blue collar world I am the strange one. White collar guys being fastidious about the honesty of their expense reports IS different.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

I have no experience with expense reports. I have however always assumed that everyone plays with the truth when filling them out.

"Playing with the truth" is also known as "lying". Lying is stupid and risky. Personally, I think it's too bad that he still got a severance package.

We need to create a T-shirt. "I lied on my expense report, and all I have to show for it is $18 million."

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@DrewDad,

DD, It was all inclusive in his sign-up contract; the company cannot renege on that contract for any reason not spelled out.

Most board of directors are irresponsible incompetents; they have increased CEO pay and benefits by multiples while leaving the worker's wages and benefits stagnant.

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@cicerone imposter,

Yes, I understand that. Hopefully they'll add something in the next contract about stealing from the company nullifying any severance package.

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@cicerone imposter,

and he was about to sign a three year $100M deal which was based upong the great things that he has done for HP.....so relative to that Hurd hurt himself a great deal.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

That's the half truth; Hurd hurt himself, but the board of directors still are floating top-heavy wages and benefits without rewarding the workers of the same company that make companies successful.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

but the board of directors still are floating top-heavy wages and benefits without rewarding the workers of the same company that make companies successful.

Of course I agree with you..

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Top Preforming CEO fired for lying on his Expense Report

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