Word: compaq
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...remind us. The personalities driving HP's long-running and very public merger debate are larger than life, and the whole of Silicon Valley is riveted by the story. Which, if you haven't been paying attention, goes like this: CEO Carly Fiorina wants a $25 billion marriage with Compaq--the largest tech merger ever--to avoid being squeezed between Dell (the personal-computer giant) and IBM (a leader in tech services and server computers). But certain key shareholders--including the children of HP's garage-dwelling founders and geek-world deities Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard--think the proposed...
...merger debate rushes toward a March 19 shareholder vote, both sides have engaged in a nasty nationwide campaign of name calling. Last week Walter Hewlett, Bill Hewlett's son and the HP board member leading the fight against the Compaq merger, released a report on what the company should really be doing. Its main proposal: dump Fiorina. "She's burned a lot of bridges," Hewlett told TIME. "It's hard to see how she would survive." This came after the rest of the board, which backs Fiorina, drafted a blistering open letter to Hewlett: "You have insulted our personal commitment...
...there's clearly a change in investors' willingness to view the merits of the deal," says Joel Wagon-feld, research analyst at Banc of America Securities, which had previously been skeptical of the merger. Indeed, the gap between what HP wants to pay for Compaq shares and how the market values them--a key measure of merger confidence, called the arbitrage spread--has narrowed from a toxic $4.35 in November to $1.70. In another tacit sign of support, the company's top five shareholders have been quietly adding to their stake...
...taken internal polls shows just how dicey things were.) And Hewlett's fellow board members have been increasingly eager to point out that Fiorina is not riding roughshod over them. "It's unfair to say this is Carly's deal," says Bob Knowling, a former CEO of Covad. "Compaq just makes a tremendous amount of sense. Two plus two can equal five...
...thousands of engineers the pink slip soon after taking the helm at HP. Then, believing that the best way to fix an ailing, giant company is to merge it with another ailing, giant company and hope for “synergy,” she announced a merger with Compaq, a move that is generating boardroom chaos even now, eight months after the announcement. Whatever happens, HP and Compaq are two companies whose core products—printers for HP and services and consulting for Compaq—are under attack or not growing. Merging the two to wring some...