CUPERTINO, Calif. - Hewlett-Packard's shareholder meeting Tuesday to decide the fate of the Compaq merger was the ultimate in Silicon Valley culture clash.
It was the old technology guard, for whom getting rich is fine so long as it's done quietly, against the new guard, the MBAs for whom technology merely is a means to an end.
The end, of course, is money.
Under brilliant blue skies, investors filed into a concert hall on the campus of a community college near one of HP's large corporate sites. Dissidents waved banners and beat drums.
Two days after St. Patrick's Day, supporters of Walter Hewlett's efforts to scuttle the merger wore green to show their support for the green proxy cards he asked shareholders to return, signifying a "No" vote.
The HP heir was the popular favorite of the day, receiving a standing ovation before, during and after his brief speech. An apparently exhausted HP CEO Carly Fiorina joined in the applause when Hewlett declared HP is not a "relic." Hewlett implored that "HP is not a company in crisis," an assertion with which Fiorina later agreed.
(For all the nastiness of the past four months -- see "The HP Ugly Achievement Awards") -- there was no rancor between Fiorina and Hewlett.
Hewlett knew at that point, as did Fiorina, that he probably had lost his long and bitter fight. And so what sounded at the time like a humble but confident speech in fact will likely turn out to have been a conciliatory address.
The day, of course, belonged to Fiorina, if in fact HP maintains what she called a "slim but sufficient" margin of victory (see "HP claims victory"). Just as she has fielded endless questions from investors since first announcing the merger in September, Fiorina answered about 90 minutes worth of questions, most of them openly or subtly hostile.
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Fiorina reminded shareholders that 36,000 HP employees work for business units that are losing money. Translation: Without the merger, all of those jobs are in danger, not just the 15,000 job eliminations promised by the combined company.
To the assertion that HP is paying too much for Compaq, Fiorina had a curious response. "If we execute well, nobody will remember the price," she said, adding that if execution of the merger fails it won't have been about price.
Fiorina has relied repeatedly on the outside board members who supported the merger, but just one, retired Airtouch Chairman Sam Ginn, bothered attending the meeting. Could it be they didn't want to face the HP retirees who so clearly opposed the merger?
After the vote, after Fiorina's triumphant press conference, Walter Hewlett held forth for reporters himself. In a hotel about 15 minutes from the HP meeting, the first time he has ever held a press conference. Without conceding defeat, Hewlett joked that he was looking forward to getting back to being a "musician and academic," the derisive label Fiorina used to suggest Hewlett's opinion mattered less than management's.
Fiorina sounded one note on which surely all participants can agree. Referring to the barrage of mailings every shareholder has tolerated these past few weeks, she said, "I know all of us will be relieved when the mailman stops coming."
But what a story the mailman brought.
Send e-mail to Adam at adam_lashinsky@timeinc.com.
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