Friend and former colleague Charlie Cooper, for many years now a columnist at News.com, last night attended a bizarre event in San Francisco honoring H-P's embattled board member Patricia Dunn for her business accomplishments. Actually, I should not say he attended, actually, but, rather viewed her induction into The Bay Area Hall of Sham, err, Shame, err, Fame. Yeah, that's the ticket - Hall of Fame!
In his Wednesday column, Cooper chronicles the ill-timed affair as a momentary break from Patriciategate. It's a good read. H-P CEO Mark Hurd, who's now been deeply implicated in the scandal, plans to hold a press conference tomorrow to outline everything H-P is doing to correct its KGB-like behavior. Be prepared for lots of assertions that officials did not know that H-P hired gumshoes were illegally accessing phone reporters' and employees phone logs. Whether H-P poobahs knew or not what was going on (I highly suspect they did) shouldn't matter if one applies SARBOX logic. Here's a silver-tongue sample of PR-eese in the press release about tomorrow's conference: "....“What began as an effort to prevent the leaks of confidential information from HP’s boardroom ended up heading in directions that were never anticipated. HP is working hard to determine exactly what took place and when."
By the way, H-P is the world's largest chip buyer and this whole ordeal has only knocked a couple of bucks off the company's 52-week high.
