TYPO CAUSES HP AND COMPAQ TO MERDE
Mistake on Proxy Ballots Hits Wall Street Like Bomb
satirewire.com
Cupertino, Calif. (SatireWire.com) — Embarrassed company officials today
revealed that a typographical error on the ballots used to cast votes in the
proposed deal between Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer has
inadvertently caused the two companies to merde.
Observers said the incident is
unprecedented in the annals of
corporate typography, and potentially
much more damaging than the Royal
Bank of Scotland's hostile makeover
of NatWest last year — in which 8,000
retail stockbrokers were forcibly given
fuller lips — or the Roman Catholic
Church's 1999 Initial Pubic Offering,
which of course turned out not to be a
typo at all.
HP Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, who
Tuesday had declared a slim victory in her battle to finalize the largest merger
in computer company history, downplayed the result as a "minor development."
But many analysts disagreed, saying that finally, something had happened to
make the HP-Compaq deal remotely interesting.
What the vote means legally, however, remains unclear.
"There's really nothing to compare this to," said Goldman Sachs technology
analyst Milton Barnes: "All we know for sure is, right now, instead of having $20
billion worth of merger, we have $20 billion worth of merde."
Replied Walter Hewlett, an HP board member and the main opponent of the
deal, "That's what we've been saying would happen all along."
Fiorina, meanwhile, refused to speculate on what the mistake might mean for
her career, although she insisted it would not affect Compaq chief executive
Michael Capellas, who under the agreement was destined to be No. 2 anyway. |
