Five years ago, Mark Hurd joined Hewlett-Packard as its President and Chief Executive Officer. Late Friday afternoon, I saw on Twitter – of all places – that Mark Hurd had resigned. Even though the tweet linked to a web page that provided excerpts from a press release, HP had not yet updated its executive team web page. Bad form when you get scooped by Twitter. Well, the word is that Mark Hurd had violated HP’s Standards of Business Conduct. HP also disclosed Mark Hurd’s Separation Agreement and Release. And, for comparison, Carly Fiorina’s Severance Agreement.
Update: See Levine v. Andreesen et al. for the shareholder derivative complaint that the Mark Hurd severance agreements constitutes a waste of corporate assets.
Update: On September 20, 2010, HP announced that it had settled its litigation against Mark Hurd for breach of contract and threatened misappropriation of trade secrets in connection with Mark Hurd’s employment with Oracle Corporation. As part of the settlement, Mark Hurd waived his rights to the 330,177 performance-based restricted stock units granted in January 17, 2008 and to the 15,853 time-based restricted stock units granted on December 11, 2009.