The story of Hewlett-Packard, an outwardly staid technology company, has come to resemble the plotline of an improbable corporate soap opera.
It has included, during the past decade, the firings of three chief executives, one after a probe into claims of sexual harassment; a salacious boardroom spying scandal that resulted in the resignation of its then-chairwoman; and a spate of highly controversial multibillion-dollar deals, including one that sparked a public feud between management and heirs of the company’s founders.
Now, to top it off, come claims of massive accounting distortion at Autonomy, the British software company that was the object of the latest of those deals. By the end of this week at least one criminal investigation had been launched into the affair, by the FBI.
This trail of destruction has done more than shred management reputations and clean out boardrooms. There has also been a significant financial toll. The latest $8.8bn charge this week, largely caused by the Autonomy mess, has lifted the total write-offs at HP during the past year, taken against a decade of acquisitions, to $19.7bn.
And that does not even count a seemingly endless round of restructuring charges that have topped $100m in every one of the past 13 years, reaching $11bn in all.
The numbers are a stark reminder of what has befallen a company that played a central part in the postwar rise of Silicon Valley. HP has become ensnared in an endless cycle of deals, reorganisations and job cuts, as successive managers have tried, and failed, to jolt its moribund business back to life.
Meg Whitman, the former eBay boss and Republican candidate for governor of California, took the helm last year with a promise to break this pattern. Yet, contemplating the Autonomy scandal, she ruefully admitted this week: “When we have an event like this, you have to work harder. It doesn’t make it any easier.”