Top Preforming CEO fired for lying on his Expense Report

Apple's innovations have been hard on all of the hardware giants, look at RIM (blackberry), nobody needs to make an iphone or ipad killer, they need to design the next big thing in electronics, stop trying to beat Apple by copying them after they design something, design something new yourselves

Hewlett-Packard, the technology giant that has stumbled through repeated embarrassments, was preparing on Wednesday to fire its chief executive, less than one year after naming him to the post, according to several people with knowledge of the board’s actions.


The leading candidate to replace H.P.’s chief, Léo Apotheker, was Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, who was sought for her ability to run a large technology company, said the people, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized by the board to speak publicly.

With the move to fire its third chief executive in a row, Hewlett-Packard risks looking like the tech company that cannot find its way. It is one of the oldest and most successful tech companies and yet in recent years it has been surpassed by far more innovative and better-managed companies like Google, Apple and Facebook in symbolizing innovation in Silicon Valley. The question facing H.P. is whether a new chief executive can restore its leadership position.

In the past few years, one of the world's most iconic technology companies--Hewlett Packard--has imploded in a spectacular series of missteps.
First it was the controversial hiring and then firing of CEO Carly Fiorina, who bought Compaq and put HP into the personal computer business.
Then it was an eavesdropping scandal, in which the company's chairman was indicted after the board hired investigators to try to figure out which board members were leaking info to the press.
Then it was the controversial firing of CEO Mark Hurd, following an expense-and-sexual-harassment scandal, after a few years in which the stock had performed quite well.
Then it was the hiring of CEO Leo Apotheker, a software expert, to be Hurd's replacement, raising quizzical eyebrows all around. Apotheker quickly got off on the wrong foot by blowing a couple of quarters, embracing the company's new tablet business, and then announcing plans to shutter it. Apotheker then suggested that HP would spin off its PC business to focus on corporate services, a move that caught most people by surprise.
And then, earlier this week, stories appeared that HP's board is meeting to discuss firing Apotheker after less than a year on the job ... and replacing him with former eBay CEO and California governor candidate Meg Whitman. (AllThingsD reports an announcement will be made after the close today.)
The market cheered news that Apotheker might get canned, but the idea of Whitman as HP CEO was greeted with laughter and derision in Silicon Valley. For many observers, the change confirmed that HP's board has utterly lost its way. And Whitman does seem a strange choice to lead an enterprise technology company.

-- Mike Tyson once famously boasted that he wanted to eat a rival's children. You kind of get the feeling that's how Oracle CEO Larry Ellison feels about Hewlett-Packard.

Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) is clearly enjoying the fact that HP has been stumbling and bumbling for a while now. The software giant hired former HP CEO Mark Hurd to be its president last year, and Ellison takes great pride in rubbing salt in the HP wound.

The latest example? In a highly unusual public spitting match, Oracle blatantly accused the CEO of Autonomy, a British software firm that HP is buying for more than $10 billion, of lying. Ellison claimed during Oracle's earnings call last week that Autonomy had been shopped to Oracle, which had no interest because a $6 billion price tag was "absurdly high."

Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch denied that a meeting took place. On Wednesday night, Oracle put out a press release saying that Oracle had PowerPoint presentations from Autonomy's investment banker. It also offered up the specific date and time of a meeting between Lynch and Hurd. Lynch then admitted in other reports published Wednesday that he did meet with Hurd -- but only to talk about technical issues in software. So Oracle followed up with another press release at 1:31 Thursday morning with the headline "Another Whopper From Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch." In that release, Oracle included a link to a section on its website with the catchy link Oracle.com/PleaseBuyAutonomy. That page featured the PowerPoint slides.


Wow.

HP fends off accusations of dysfunction

Why did Oracle do this? Ellison is known for being, uh, eccentric. But this is a new high (low?) for the company. Oracle was not immediately available for comment.

Simply put, I think Oracle smells blood. Like the shark that Ellison is, he's hoping to move in for the kill.

By now you've probably heard the news: Leo Apotheker has received a severance package worth $13.2 million in cash and stock for his 11-month tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
Apotheker's outsized payout, which includes relocation fees back to Europe and up to $300,000 to cover losses on the sale of his California home, follows the more-than $12 million his predecessor Mark Hurd received from HP after being ousted following a scandal. Hurd's successor, Carly Fiorina got more than $21 million in severance when she left the firm in 2007.
And new CEO Meg Whitman has received a package worth over $13 million, mostly comprised of stock options tied to performance, according to Equilar.
Clearly, there's something wrong at HP, whose board has been pilloried in the press in the wake of Apotheker's firing.

For fiscal 2012, HP is projecting earnings of at least $4 per share, excluding items. Wall Street analysts on average expect the company to earn $4.54 for the full year, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
"They set a goal they could achieve, they wanted to put a number out there that they could hit," Michael Holt, analyst with Morningstar. "Meg Whitman is bringing a focus to operating the business which has been lacking."
Sales from its personal systems group, encompassing PCs, slipped 2 percent while revenue from its services arm slid 4 percent

Leo Apotheker, former CEO H-P
Leo Apotheker was one of the shortest-lived CEOs and yet he still managed to make the list of worst chief executives for 2011.
Apotheker only donned the CEO moniker of H-P for 11 months, but during that time he missed financial targets and couldn't figure out whether the company was selling or keeping the consumer PC business, says Finkelstein.
Since the the firing of Apotheker, H-P's board has hired former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. (See: HP's Implosion Continues: Hapless Board Prepares To Fire CEO, Hire Meg Whitman)
But the icing on the cake is Apotheker's reward for failing at his job. His good-bye package totals upwards of $25 million, according to Footnoted.com's Michelle Leder, and includes $7.2 million in severance pay, 156,000 shares of accelerated vesting stock, another 424,000 in performance shares, a $2.4 million bonus and money to relocate his family back to Europe. (See: Another Corporate Outrage: 'Golden Parachutes' for Failed CEOs)
Like Netflix and RIM, H-P's stock lost about 50% of its value in 2011.

Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellison stepped down as chief executive officer of the software maker he founded, making way for a new generation of executives after one of the most profitable runs for a leader in business history.

Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, currently co-presidents of Oracle, were both named CEO to succeed Ellison, the company said today. Hurd will run sales, marketing and strategy, while Catz will remain chief financial officer and oversee legal and manufacturing operations.