Top Preforming CEO fired for lying on his Expense Report

I think it's too bad that he still got a severance package.

In an impassioned e-mail sent to The New York Times, Mr. Ellison chided H.P.’s board for what he said was a grave mistake.

“The H.P. board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago,” Mr. Ellison wrote. “That decision nearly destroyed Apple and would have if Steve hadn’t come back and saved them.”

Oracle, the world’s largest database software maker, has been a close partner of H.P., which sells large computing systems to corporations.

Since its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, completed early this year, Oracle has become a major rival to H.P. in the computing hardware market.

Mr. Ellison and Mr. Hurd, meanwhile, have been close personal friends. Both are avid tennis players, and Mr. Hurd often plays at Mr. Ellison’s house in Silicon Valley.

Mr. Ellison’s attack on the H.P. board focused on questions of corporate governance.

“In losing Mark Hurd, the H.P. board failed to act in the best interest of H.P.’s employees, shareholders, customers and partners,” Mr. Ellison wrote. “The H.P. board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false.”

Based on the evidence that has been released to date, the most likely scenario seems like the following:

1. Mark Hurd spent some quality time with Jodie Fisher, some of which was on the company's dime. He developed a crush on her or she developed a crush on him, and the feeling was, initially, mutual.

2. Someone--Mark or Jodie--wanted the quality time to progress to a full-blown love affair. For whatever reason--perhaps because the lust was, at some point, unrequited--it did not.

3. Jodie Fisher stopped getting consulting assignments from HP and stopped having quality time with Mark. This likely happened either because 1) Mark decided a quick romp the relationship wasn't worth risking his job and/or wrecking his marriage over or 2) because Mark had realized he wasn't going to get lucky and moved on or 3) because Jodie Fisher suddenly felt uncomfortable in Mark's presence.

4. Sometime thereafter, Jodie Fisher concluded that "sexual harassment" had occurred. (Because her love was unrequited and she was obsessed and disappointed? Because Mark demanded consulting services that she didn't want to provide? As yet, we don't know.)

5. Jodie threatened to sue Mark for sexual harassment.

6. HP's board freaked.

7. HP's board investigated the sexual harassment claim and found... nothing. But...

8. HP's board was still terrified of the bad publicity that would ensue when Fisher's attorney, Gloria "Pit Bull" Allred, went on all the talk shows raving about what a horrible sex predator their CEO was and how he had demanded an innocent single mother do all sorts of heinous things and then fired her when she didn't.

9. HP's board, thankfully, found some inaccuracies in Mark's expense reports, which they realized they could use to oust him--and, thereby, conveniently, avoid the bad publicity above.

10. HP's board concluded that the inaccuracies did NOT constitute obvious proof of fraud or embezzlement and that it was worth $40 million in severance not to have Mark Hurd sue the company for wrongful termination. And they therefore demanded his resignation instead of firing him.

That, in our opinion, is the most likely story of what happened here.

There's no reason for HP to lose 8% in its equity value based on one CEO's dismissal.

Now, none of this is to say that Hurd wasn't a reckless idiot.

Doing the right thing might not always be great for your wallet, but that doesn't make it the right thing.