Couldn't have said it better myself @openvms.org

http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=05/02/09/5992181 .....While many on Wall Street blessed the multibillion dollar Compaq deal, it was not universally praised. Many felt that Compaq had not yet finished digesting its acquisition of Digital Equipment Corp. "The Compaq deal was stupid--there's no other good word for it. But the bad thing is, it was stupid at the time, not just in retrospect," said Jeff Matthews, general partner at Ram Partners, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund that holds no interest in HP. "Walter Hewlett correctly tried to stop it. But the board was in a position where it was either support Carly or not, and they had to support Carly, even though it meant doing a really stupid deal. "They spent $24 billion in HP stock buying Compaq, and they probably could have wired $24 billion directly to the bottom of the ocean and been in about as good shape as they are now," Matthews added. .... Separately.... http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml;jsessionid=PRSX1 IYGX1UQ4QSNDBCSKH0CJUMEKJVN?articleId=59302327 HP will stick to its strategy selling its portfolio of products, and it will look for a CEO who believes in that approach, Dunn and Wayman said. "We think it's a unique portfolio that is stronger together than apart," Wayman said. There has been much speculation that HP would spin off its hugely profitable printing business, but the executives said the board isn't considering that. "What needs to be done is achieving the opportunities present in a remarkable collection of businesses and assets that make up the HP portfolio," said Dunn. ....Sounds like Patricia needs a letter or 1000 from the VMS faithful just to remind her to give us our fair share of advertising and marketing... Dunn said there wasn't a single triggering event that led the board to ask Fiorina to step down, a decision it's been considering over several weeks with the help of outside advisers. She said a search for a new CEO would begin immediately but added that no candidates for the job have been contacted. and this.... http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=593023 36 Just three days before Fiorina's exit, announced Wednesday by HP's board of directors, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company was in the process of laying off direct-sales account reps, sources said. As many as 2,000 employees were slated to be laid off, said one source close to HP. Sounds like the channel could use a little VMS advertising now.... --- OpenVMS - The classics never go out of style.

"They spent $24 billion in HP stock buying Compaq, and they probably could have wired $24 billion directly to the bottom of the ocean and been in about as good shape as they are now," Do you think the guy's opinionated? If I had said it in here, all the HP apologists would be down my throat in an instant. It would be interesting to tally up all the profits generated by all the pieces of Compaq that were kept in the merger (PC's, iPaq, Tru64, VMS, Alphaservers, Tandem stuff) for all 3 years since the merger and see what the total is, and then look at that total profit less the percentage of all the costs associated with plant closings, layoff costs, etc... attributable to former Compaq staff and facilities. I'll bet it's pretty ugly. --- OpenVMS - The classics never go out of style.

John Smith wrote: > > "They spent $24 billion in HP stock buying Compaq, and they probably could > have wired $24 billion directly to the bottom of the ocean and been in about > as good shape as they are now," Subject: Elephants can dance Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 17:18:33 -0500 From: JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@teksavvy.com> Organization: Relative Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Just (finally) read Lou Gerstner's "Who says Elephants can't dance" book. It was written circa 2002. (so Gerstner was fully aware of what was going on betwene HP and Compaq). Gerstner got in IBM in April 1993. In page 221 of the paperback, there is a most interesting section on takeovers. "We need to grow, so let's go acquire somebody" .... "This is a contagious disease that infects too many executives. When given a choice of working hard to fix a base business or, instead, completing a glamorous acquisition and crowing about its promise on the financial TV stations, too many executives opt for the latter." "A partial list of companies that were propopsed as acquisition candidates include: MCI, Nortel, Compaq, SGI and Novell <...> Investment bankers with thick blue books were alwasy ready to describe a yellow brick road leading to the wonderful city of Oz. NOT ONE OF THESE DEALS WOULD HAVE WORKED. "I could tell a lot of investment-banker stories, but perhaps the one that stands out in my mind the most was the proposal from one bank that IBM acquire Compaq Computer." Gertsner then goes on showing how the investment bankers showed glowing success for IBM buying Compaq, but when Gertner looks into the fine print, he realised that such a transaction would wipe out 5 years of IBM profits (roughly $50 billion) and IBM would show huge losses during that period. When the banker was questioned the response was "Oh, investors would all see right through this, it wouldn't matter". ------ What this tells me is that Capellas had been actively looking for a buyer. There is no specific time mentioned for this story. But it does show that it wasn't people interested in buying Compaq, it was Compaq hiring bankers to find anyone gullibe enough to buy it. The timing of bank pitching Compaq to IBM would be most interesting. Alpha had no value to HP. But would have had value to IBM. (perhaps not the chip itself, but the engineers and the intellectual property). Perhaps Curly didn't kill alpha because it may have been of value to some suitors such as IBM, but when time ran out and HP became the chosen suitor, then Curly killed Alpha and donated it to Intel.