Of all those offering their take on Mark Hurd's bizarre, unexpected resignation as HP's CEO, Lawrence Ellison, CEO of database software company Oracle, might be the loudest yet. He thinks HP's board just made a very stupid decision.
In an email to the New York Times, Ellison wrote:
The H.P. board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago...that decision nearly destroyed Apple and would have if Steve hadn't come back and saved them.
In losing Mark Hurd, the H.P. board failed to act in the best interest of H.P.'s employees, shareholders, customers and partners...The H.P. board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false.
Oracle and HP have been partners in the past, though they've been in close competition since Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems earlier this year. [NYT]
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