Fiorina Urged 'Extraordinary' Action To Win Backers

An HP spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday that CEO Carly Fiorina made the comment shortly before the shareholder vote in a voice mail to Chief Financial Officer Bob Wayman, which was reported earlier by the San Jose Mercury News.

HP's tactics in the hotly contested purchase sparked a lawsuit by dissident board member Walter Hewlett in which HP is accused of effectively buying votes from one of the large shareholders, Deutsche Bank, in the March 19 election.

HP has said the suit, which is due to go to trial on April 23, is baseless.

Fiorina left a voice mail for Wayman on March 17, saying that she was concerned that Deutsche Bank and Northern Trust Company would vote against the company's purchase.

In the voice mail, Fiorina tells Wayman that the two executives needed to call the two firms "and see what we can get, but we may have to do something extraordinary for those two to bring 'em over the line here."

Wayman said in a statement published by the Mercury News and confirmed by the spokeswoman that HP hadn't acted improperly.

HP and Walter Hewlett waged a bitter four-month long battle for shareholder votes in the press, in newspaper advertisements and in mailings to shareholders ahead of the vote.

Hewlett-Packard said it believes that it won the vote and is pushing ahead with plans to buy No. 2 computer maker Compaq, but it is still waiting for a final vote tally.

Walter Hewlett says the vote is too close to call.

"In the last few days before the special meeting, we were constantly prioritizing our efforts based on feedback from investors and whether we had yet made our case effectively to them," Wayman said.

"We did in fact make extraordinary efforts to present the merits of the merger to our investors, including dozens of presentations in the final days," he said.

Walter Hewlett argued that the deal would saddle HP with Compaq's low-profit personal computer business, while Fiorina said the deal will create a company large enough to compete with No. 1 computer maker IBM.

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