The tables have turned for Hewlett-Packard's chairwoman Patricia Dunn

[kurth]

Dunn For?
Parmy Olson, 09.07.06, 8:35 AM ET

The tables have turned for Hewlett-Packard's chairwoman Patricia Dunn. Having smelt a rat on her board earlier this year and hired private investigators to find out who was leaking information to the media, the tactics employed by those investigators are now being pored over by business and ethics experts and -- most seriously -- California's attorney general. HP confirmed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Committee on Wednesday that it had sought the private telephone records of board members to find the source. That investigation had led Dunn to confront George Keyworth II at a May board meeting. He owned up to the board, but refused to step down. Instead another board member and friend of Keyworth, Tom Perkins, stormed out of the meeting and promptly resigned, citing a breach of ethics on Dunn's part. HP said that it would not be re-nominating Keyworth for the board and his tenure would end by March 2007.

Meanwhile the notion of ethics seems hardly to have subsided now four months later, with some of HP's official's having been subpoenaed by the state's attorney general Bill Lockyer on Wednesday. Lockyer has said the investigation is still in the "early fact-finding stage" and has refused to say whether criminal charges would be brought against any director. "I don't have a settled view on whether it was illegal yet, but it certainly was colossally stupid," he told The Associated Press...

Dunn, a former freelance journalist who has become one of the most powerful women in corporate America, oversaw the ouster of former HP CEO Carly Fiorina in February 2005 and the hiring of Mark Hurd as her successor. Now analysts say she may be the next one to leave. "When you start spying on your own board, you darn well better have probable cause," said Peter Morici, professor at the Professor Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. "If the chairman thinks this is the way business ought to be conducted, maybe it's time for her to take a sabbatical. It's arrogant and inappropriate." ...

http://www.forbes.com/2006/09/07/hewlett-packard-dunn-cx_po_0907autofacescan01.html

[Double T]

1. corporate america's arrogance and sense of priviliage.........

continues to breed widespread corruption throughout many corporations. All of the top management and board of directors need to be put on a real short leash with a choke collar.

[Chimichurri]

2. here is a letter from one of the board members

railing against the spying

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0905061hp1.html