Fiorina Lashes Out At Hewlett Attorney

Growing clearly frustrated by questioning from Stephen Neal, Walter Hewlett's lead attorney in the suit seeking to overturn the March 19 Compaq Computer merger vote, Fiorina at one point Wednesday morning said, "You are accusing the CEO of a publicly traded company of lying."

But Neal responded, "I'm only asking questions."

Fiorina also said, "We've not been able to bring whole management teams together thanks to this lawsuit."

Neal tried repeatedly to get Fiorina to translate the so-called Value Capture numbers--which are periodic business forecasts from business unit managers--into long-term financial forecasts that he said should have been disclosed to shareholders prior to the March 19 proxy vote.

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"You are asking me to do on the stand what is not timely to do," she said. "I don't want every newspaper in the world to print second-half forecasts before we've had an opportunity to integrate the two companies."

She reiterated that these Value Capture documents "are not forecasts; they are planning documents."

Neal introduced testimony that Value Capture reports from February and March were coming in below management projections.

Fiorina concluded her testimony just before noon. She was on the stand for almost half of the three-day trial, scheduled to end Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, HP CFO Bob Wayman acknowledged that he called Deutsche Bank's vice chairman after hearing rumors that the bank's asset managers were voting their shares against the deal. Wayman testified that he set up a presentation with Deutsche Bank just hours before the proxy vote to make a presentation on why the managers should support the merger.

He also said that he learned that the bank hand-switched some votes it had previously voted against the Compaq merger to support the union prior to the March 19 proxy vote. He also acknowledged that Deutsche Bank, which was doing merger-related work for HP, would receive an extra $1 million fee if the merger went through.

But, so far, attorney Neal hasn't presented any evidence that there was vote buying on the part of HP to win Deutsche Bank's support.

Wayman's testimony continues Wednesday afternoon.