Deep Ear adds new act to HP merger circus
By Mike Cassidy
Mercury News
To: HP staff
From: Carly
Subject: Voice Mail
You know how we've always said that HP is a voice mail culture? Uh, not anymore. From now on: Morse code, carrier pigeon, Etch A Sketch, even face-to-face if you have to. Anything but voice mail.
Read this memo. Memorize it. Then eat it.
Hope you had a great weekend.
C.F.
Hey. It happens. Stuff gets out. Embarrassing stuff. Damaging stuff. Unpleasant stuff.
Bill Gates and pals had their infamous e-mails about crushing Netscape and a plan to pay off Intuit to help Microsoft win the browser wars.
Now HP Chief Executive Carly Fiorina has her voice mail message. It was left for HP exec Bob Wayman, but some Deep Ear retrieved it and anonymously passed it to the Mercury News. The paper on Wednesday published the contents and put an audio file on the Web.
``. . . you call the guy at Deutsche Bank again first thing Monday morning. And if you don't get the right answer from him, then you and I need to demand a conference call, an audience, etc., to make sure that we get them in the right place.''
Cue ``The Godfather'' theme.
Maybe Fiorina's words will end up in court, the way the pearls from Gates and company did. Walter Hewlett (yes, dissident board member Walter Hewlett) is suing in Delaware to overturn pro-merger votes. He says Fiorina and company engaged in arm-twisting and lying.
And who knows? Maybe the morning DJs will pick up the recorded message and mix it into a rap. Maybe HP itself will use it in its own ads.
``HP: We'll get you in the right place.''
So far, only one pirated message has come over the digital transom. There is nothing to the rumor that a hacker retrieved the following message from Wayman's voice mail:
``Hey, Ob-bay. This is Arly-cay. Ixnay on the oice-mail vay.''
Still, it must be a bit unsettling. Here's Fiorina in the middle of trying to swing this huge merger and someone is swiping her words.
Fiorina has got to be wondering what's coming next.
While not condoning the ripping off of phone messages, I will say the act has given us a peek into how the big guns operate.
And leaking the message has taken the merger circus to a new level.
It's been dramatic from the start. Silicon Valley royalty vs. outsider CEO and all that. Then came the shareholder vote on the $19 billion merger at Flint Center and the fight went from dramatic to weird.
The Flint Center hullabaloo was two parts high school pep rally and one part political convention. (Remember the green outfits? The self-proclaimed ``fleas''? And the French guys leafleting the men's restroom?)
And now we're off the charts.
Hewlett sues to overturn the vote. The HP board tells Hewlett to start packing. HP argues in court that so what if it did lean on Deutsche Bank a little to get it to change its votes? ``Not to say we did, your honor, but what's the big deal if we did?''
And now the purloined voice mail message.
Nothing seems beyond the realm of possibility. Except the chance that anybody in this fight is going to go peacefully.
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Contact Mike Cassidy at mcassidy@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5536.
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