Schaum's Outline of Mathematics of Finance Book

This is a book about the inner working of the HP board around the end of Carly's reign to the first couple years of Mark Hurd's. It is a tragedy. It demonstrates that those given the responsibility to manage a large corporation may not actually take the job seriously. It also money & power make people do stupid things.

The central characters are Patricia Dunn and Tom Perkins. Everything radiates out from them. It is Perkins' disdain for Dunn that drives him to ruin her at any turn. He had found himself on the board of HP through a roundabout means (Tandem -> Compaq -> HP). He took it upon himself to make "everything better." He may have been a powerful and successful venture capitalist, he comes across in interviews and email as a vindictive little boy.

The author's main purpose is to shed light on the actual happenings of the board meetings and the circumstances of HP's internal security folks taking liberty with their mission of finding leaks. The ineptness of HP's internal people is laughable, but I feel common when given such responsibility to people who don't know. The security people set the stage for the boardroom fight and the eventual tearing down of Dunn.

The book will also give you a sense of how much spin is put into business articles. Here politics reaches from California to the US Congress. A lot of that spin was done by Perkins to shape public opinion to fit his twist of reality. He makes himself look like the victim, when he is the bully. His actions caused a lot of hurt, but also showed to what lengths someone like him would employ to not be viewed as the loud blowhard he really was.

The author, I believe, goes to great lengths to get as much of the record in place to support the narrative. He has interviews with Perkins and Dunn, along with many others in the cast of characters. He also uses email exchanges and HP documents brought public due to the Congressional hearings.

I found myself asking at the end, didn't these people have better things to do? The HP board was a mess and didn't seem to serve the company. But the squabbled as if the outside world wasn't there. Perkins was wealthy beyond belief, but couldn't escape the persona he created of being the forceful character on boards who knew what he was doing. But he doesn't come across as someone who did anything good. Dunn is the tragic character here, having her name stained by Perkins. I have to ask if she couldn't have just walked away and helped other cancer patients. Why was holding onto the chairperson HP so important? That I didn't understand, but then I'm only an engineer.

Oh & Mark Hurd? He threw Dunn to the wolves after working closely together for over a year. He chose his career at HP over professional integrity.

As I said, it was all a tragedy. I came away shocked and disgusted, plus a bit sad.