Now be honest – would you take divorce advice from Meg Whitman? The corporate divorce at HP went so smoothly that the Enterprise wing now plans to spin up a services practice to offer advice to other organizations going through similar upheaval. HP split operationally on 1 August when it performed a switch-over of systems for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and now sister company HP Inc, but in …
My memories of the Agilent spinoff is that it went well. Two in a row and we now can draw a straight line between the two :-)
Now mergers - well the odd recent success (3Par for example) have been dramatically outclassed by failures - a combination of strategy, and tactical mistakes, business and technicall. Ironic really if HP continues to generate shareholder and executive value through internal and external divestment.
It's a great idea, and I even have a name for it
ASaaS
or
Asset Stripping as a Service
After watching DEC meld into Compaq, Compaq meld into HP and now watching HP split into two separate companies, you can certainly say one thing, HP is very good at merging and breaking up companies, although Autonomy was a bit of a wobble.
How does one measure the success of an M&A, anyway?
Is it by the number of people thrown out of work, or just the increase in shareholder value?
Ok, I'll stop now, they always did make good printers and scientific calculators. I suspect there are considerably higher margins to be made from inventing paper profits, at least in the short term.
I wonder what the HP founders would think of this latest "invention".
Many serious commentators would say the same. As, I suspect, would the old HP board, at least in retrospect - perhaps autonomy, with a small "a" , is back in fashion.
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