Shareholders voted early and often at Hewlett-Packard Co.’s contentious referendum on the company’s plan to merge with Compaq Computer Corp.
When everything was over except more jawboning Tuesday, HP CEO Carly Fiorina said merger proponents had carried the day, but dissident board member Walter Hewlett said a “razor thin margin” made the contest much too close to call.
Both statements came after a two-hour shareholder meeting in Cupertino, Calif., where merger opponents led the meeting in giving Hewlett a standing ovation.
Official results won’t be known for three to six weeks, according to election arbiter IVS Associates.
“It’s going to be weeks, not days,” said Michael Barbera, an IVS principal in Delaware, where the ballots cast at the meeting for 900,000 shareholders were taken to be counted under close guard.
Counting is not simple after a months-long proxy fight in which both sides solicited votes by mailing as many as 12 proxies per shareholder.
IVS must certify that the signatures on ballots match those on record and discard all ballots except the final ones cast by shareholders who voted more than once.
At stake in Tuesday’s election is the future of two companies that, combined, would create a $90 billion computer-maker and tech-services giant.
The merger is widely viewed as a referendum on Fiorina’s management and vision of the computing industry versus that of HP’s founders’ heirs.
Walter Hewlett, at a press conference after the shareholder meeting, disputed Fiorina’s victory claim, though his quiet tone suggested that of a concession speech despite his insistence that the results were too close to call. “The last five months have been a remarkable period in my life,” he said. “I feel like I’ve stepped out of my normal life and into an alternate universe, but it was a cause that needed to be taken up.”
At the meeting, Hewlett praised employees for not getting distracted by the proxy fight. “HP is a strong company. HP is simply not a company in crisis or without a future,” he said in remarks directed at Fiorina’s insistence that HP must get bigger to thrive in a consolidating industry.
Outside, an ex-HP employee banged on an antique Slingerland drum. “We’ve gotten a lot more truth out of Walter Hewlett than we have from the other side of the camp,” said drummer Gary Masching.
Opponents carried signs that said, “Fire 2 instead of 15,000”–a reference to the two CEOs, Fiorina and Compaq’s Michael Capellas, versus the estimated 15,000 employees who will lose their jobs if the companies combine.
Ruth Spangenberg, who said her husband taught engineering to HP founders William Hewlett and David Packard at Stanford University, said she voted against the merger. “When Carly first called Walter a liar, that just closed the door for me,” she said.
Although merger opponents were more visible and vocal Tuesday than proponents, the biggest blocks of shares are controlled by institutions that cast their votes via proxy agents.
Banc One Investment Advisers and State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio have said they voted for the merger, while the California Public Employees’ Retirement System said it voted against the deal.
HP’s board issued a statement Tuesday that the board “believes it has received sufficient votes to approve HP’s merger with Compaq,” based on a preliminary estimate by the board’s proxy solicitor, Innisfree M&A in New York.
