Hewlett Packard

Computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. will buy 3Com Corp. for $2.7 billion to challenge Cisco Systems Inc. in the computer- networking market. Hewlett-Packard will pay $7.90 a share in cash for 3Com, 39% more than 3Com's closing price today, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard said. Chief Executive Mark Hurd is seeking to add to Hewlett-Packard's $118 billion in annual sales after the sharpest slump in personal-computer demand in history. The purchase of 3Com increases competition with Cisco, the world's largest maker of computer-networking equipment, which is also expanding into Hewlett-Packard's businesses.

Three members of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s troubled board of directors, including its chairman, will quit their posts after barely being reelected two weeks ago. The shake-up follows widespread criticism that HP botched an $11-billion acquisition of British software company Autonomy. The three directors were seen as those most directly involved in that deal and several of the board's other unpopular moves in recent years. Raymond Lane has given up his post as chairman but will remain a director, the Palo Alto company announced Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Justice has officially opened an investigation into allegations made by Hewlett-Packard that the company had uncovered widespread accounting fraud at Autonomy, the British software maker it acquired for $11 billion last year. HP confirmed the investigation  in its annual report filed Thursday  with the  U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission . While the disclosure marks the first official confirmation of an investigation, the report does not contain any further details regarding the accounting fraud.

Hewlett-Packard is reportedly working on a high-end tablet that would run on Google's Android operating system. A report this week by ReadWrite.com says HP has been putting together a new tablet since before Thanksgiving, and it could be nearing an official announcement for the device. The report, which cites two unnamed sources, is thin on details but says the rumored Android tablet would run on an NVIDIA Tegra 4 chip and could be announced after the Mobile World Congress conference in late February.

SAN FRANCISCO - Had things gone differently, Meg Whitman might today be governor of California, fighting to turn around one of the country's most financially troubled state governments. Instead, having lost her bid for that office in November 2010, she finds herself head of Hewlett-Packard Co., struggling to fix one of the high-tech industry's most troubled giants. Save HP or California. It's hard to say which is the tougher job. It sometimes seems as if just about everything that could go wrong at HP has gone wrong in recent years.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest PC and printer maker, said it's cooperating with Russian and German authorities after its Moscow offices were searched Wednesday in a possible bribery investigation. German prosecutors are investigating possible corruption linked to its 35 million euro ($47.5 million) sale of computers to Russia about seven years ago. They are examining whether the company paid bribes to win the contract, said Wolfgang Klein, a spokesman at Saxony's Chief Prosecutor's Office.

Hewlett-Packard Co.  will combine its PC and printing units into one business as the tech giant looks to improve its performance. The new Printing and Personal Systems Group will be led by Todd Bradley, who has been executive vice president of the company's PC business since 2005, the company said Wednesday. As expected, Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of the Imaging and Printing Group, will retire after 31 years at the Palo Alto company. HP said combining the two units would improve its market strategy, branding, supply chain and customer support.

Federal regulators are looking into whether Hewlett-Packard Co. employees bribed foreign officials in exchange for business abroad, HP confirmed Thursday. The Palo Alto-based computer giant said it was cooperating with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other law enforcement officials investigating the matter in Germany and Russia. The company's comments came in the wake of a Wall Street Journal report that HP's Moscow offices had been searched as part of the bribery investigation.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest personal computer maker, reported fiscal second-quarter earnings and sales that beat analysts' estimates. Net income in the quarter ended April 30 rose 28% to $2.2 billion, or 91 cents a share, from $1.72 billion, or 71 cents, a year earlier, the Palo Alto company said Tuesday. Excluding some costs, profit was $1.09 a share. That compared with the $1.06 average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales rose 13% to $30.8 billion. Analysts projected $29.8 billion.

Hewlett-Packard Co. reported a profit of $2.5 billion, or $1.10 a share, an increase of about 5% from a year earlier for a fourth quarter in which the tech giant was running largely without a chief executive. The Palo Alto company said it generated about $33.3 billion in sales during the three-month period ended Oct. 31, an increase of about 8% from a year earlier. The earnings report, issued Monday after markets closed, was rosier than analysts had predicted. HP's new chief executive, Leo Apotheker ?

SAN FRANCISCO - Had things gone differently, Meg Whitman might today be governor of California, fighting to turn around one of the country's most financially troubled state governments. Instead, having lost her bid for that office in November 2010, she finds herself head of Hewlett-Packard Co., struggling to fix one of the high-tech industry's most troubled giants. Save HP or California. It's hard to say which is the tougher job. It sometimes seems as if just about everything that could go wrong at HP has gone wrong in recent years.

Non-stop CEO changes. Strategy shifts. Board feuds. It's hard out here for a Hewlett-Packard shareholder. Even so, a chart included in HP's annual filing drives home just how battered those shareholders have been. If you invested $100 in HP in 2007, your investment today would be worth $28.41 as of the end of HP's fiscal year in October. By comparison, the same $100 invested in the S&P 500 would be worth $101.81. And if you just picked the S&P Information Technology Group, it would be worth $110.

The U.S. Department of Justice has officially opened an investigation into allegations made by Hewlett-Packard that the company had uncovered widespread accounting fraud at Autonomy, the British software maker it acquired for $11 billion last year. HP confirmed the investigation  in its annual report filed Thursday  with the  U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission . While the disclosure marks the first official confirmation of an investigation, the report does not contain any further details regarding the accounting fraud.

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch has stepped up his unusual public defense by launching a website designed to bolster his argument that allegations of accounting fraud are untrue.  Hewlett-Packard made that stunning accusation last week, claiming that Lynch and other Autonomy executives engaged in systematic accounting tricks that inflated the company's revenues before HP acquired it last year.  Rather than offering the standard "no comment"...

Could it get any worse for hobbling Hewlett-Packard Co.? HP's stock plummeted 12% on Tuesday to its lowest price in a decade after the company said it was writing off $8.8 billion because it was duped into overpaying for a British software maker. The surprise revelation came as HP reported another quarterly loss and gave a weak first-quarter outlook. "The magnitude of the charge is pretty enormous," said Jayson Noland, senior analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. "It's really bad and it's really expensive and it's really distracting.

General Motors Co. is winning the nerd wars. Earlier this week, it prevailed against Hebrew University of Jerusalem in a lawsuit over the use of an image of Albert Einstein in a People magazine advertisement in 2009. Then the automaker said Thursday that it would hire 3,000 workers from Palo Alto tech giant Hewlett-Packard Co. According to the Detroit News, the Einstein ad for the GMC Terrain SUV depicted the face of the famous physicist on top of a fit, muscular man with the line, "Ideas are sexy too. " The Israeli university owns Einstein's publicity rights and sued the automaker.

A California judge has ruled that Oracle Corp. is contractually obligated to continue developing software for Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Itanium-based servers. The decision Wednesday by Judge James P. Kleinberg in San Jose advances Hewlett-Packard's lawsuit to a jury trial to determine whether Oracle broke the contract and what, if any, damages should be awarded. Both sides have 15 days to file an objection to the decision, the judge said. The judge agreed with Hewlett-Packard that Oracle made a commitment to support Intel Corp.

Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter is usually credited with using the term "creative destruction" to describe how capitalism evolves by supplanting the old with the new. But it's a fair bet that Schumpeter never could have imagined how creatively Hewlett-Packard Co. has managed its own destruction. Arguably the founding engineering firm of Silicon Valley when it was created by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939, HP has been on a more than decade-long stumble dating back to before the appointment of the glamorous Carly Fiorina as chief executive in 1999.

A California judge has ruled that Oracle Corp. is contractually obligated to continue developing software for Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Itanium-based servers. The decision Wednesday by Judge James P. Kleinberg in San Jose advances Hewlett-Packard's lawsuit to a jury trial to determine whether Oracle broke the contract and what, if any, damages should be awarded. Both sides have 15 days to file an objection to the decision, the judge said. The judge agreed with Hewlett-Packard that Oracle made a commitment to support Intel Corp.

SAN JOSE — Hewlett-Packard Co.'s storied yet faltering business is expected to take nearly half a decade to turn around, but a looming question is whether investors will give the company and its new chief executive, Meg Whitman, that much time. Its investors have reason to be restless. Many of them have watched the Silicon Valley leviathan struggle to find its way amid heightened competition complicated by a succession of management missteps and purges. And to keep shareholders from jumping ship or demanding the heads of more executives, some analysts say, HP needs to start showing marked advances sooner rather than later.