corporate jets

Mark Hurd’s tenure as HP’s CEO continues to raise a passionate response. It’s almost one year since I wrote my original post about HP under Mark Hurd called HP Pay Cuts – an unfair act of economic opportunism and greed so with that, and approximately 1300 comments later, I think its fitting to round out the conversation with a look at HP’s SEC filing for 2009.

I have no intention of continuing to write about HP or Mark Hurd from this point on, all I’ve wanted to say has been said in previous articles, and I want to write about more interesting subjects. The HP, Mark Hurd situation is not an isolated issue, it’s symptomatic of a bigger problem with Corporations in general, and it will take a lot more than a few blogs from me to make any difference.

Lets have a look at the salient points of the SEC filing.

• Mark Hurd, Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President (the guy that makes the decisions, approves them and, supposedly, keeps them honest, all rolled into one), earned total compensation of $32, 332, 527 in 2009. When you look at it further it’s interesting to note this includes over $400,000 for 401k company matching, personal use of HP’s corporate jet, and security. Update: Also check out
• Catherine Lesjak, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, earned total compensation of $7,585,775, including over $200,000 in 401k matching, security, and personal use of the HP Corporate Jet.
• Ann Livermore, Executive Vice President, HP Enterprise Business, took home $13,424,406 in including around $184,000 in 401k matching, security and personal use of the corporate jet.
• R. Todd Bradley, Executive Vice President, Personal Systems Group, $12,538,329 in his personal coffers including about $248,000 in 401k matching, relocation expenses, personal use of the company jet, and security.
• Vyomesh I. Joshi, Executive Vice President, Imaging and Printing Group, a package of $11,644,691 including $183,000 odd of 401k matching, security services and use of the corporate jet.

Update: Mark Hurd also cashed in aproximately $11m in share options during 2009, check out Yahoo Finance HPQ Insider Transactions for the specifics. (thanks to a comenter on this post).

There we have it, Mark Hurd and four other people in HP took home $75,525,728 in 2009. Admittedly it was significantly less than the previous year, but if you consider the circumstances, and what they stooped to to "earn" it, it’s still questionable, which ever way you slice and dice it.

I invite you to read the SEC filing, it makes interesting reading in terms of the executive compensation in HP’s peer group of companies, and the "performance" based compensation scheme.

When I look at it I can’t see any real top line "performance" at all, just, in my opinion, a company that’s exploiting it’s employees, compromising Customer service through its best shoring program, and that has sold out on it’s corporate values, all for the sake of putting shareholders first.

I think it’s only a matter of time before people more significant than me start asking Mark Hurd hard questions about real growth, rather than the illusion caused by acquiring and consuming other companies. In the meantime we, as consumers and/or employees can vote with the two most tangible things we have, our labor, and our chequebooks.

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