Patricia Dunn's HP board fiasco by design

With the Hewlett Packard board pretexting scandal fully underway, HP Chairwoman Pat Dunn will end up resigning in January, but possibly not as a sole scapegoat in one of the most bizarre corporate spying situations of recent memory. Why is Dunn leaving? Most of the media think that it's a direct result of her involvement in setting up spying operations -- 007-style -- of fellow board members along with high-ranking members of the press to which leaks on unreleased HP information were given. That's a pretty large problem and it's illegal on many different levels. But was the direct illegal activity specifically ordered from Dunn? It may as well have been, since activity like this is not buying a loaf of bread at the Supermarket.

But Dunn's concern for media leaks was completely justified, although a little overblown perhaps. Are leaks to the media in this day and age so prevalent that Wall Street's myopic short-term vision can be heightened sharply when "exclusives" come along that the general public does not know about? With what appears to be knee-jerk reactions to public stock anytime something of any significance happens, it makes sense why Dunn was so concerned.

Being at odds with some longtime board members did not help things. What a power struggle the HP board must have been in for quite some time. While newer CEO Mark Hurd has been making great strides with HP operations, the board has been mired in egos and other superfluous nonsense that detracts from, well, HP.

With Dunn being a corporate governance expert it's easy to understand why she was so specific on eliminating possible sources of corruption and being a detail freak about governance at the same time. I'm glad someone does, since corporate governance today is corrupt at so many levels it's unimaginable. Has Sarbanes-Oxley mediated this somewhat? Perhaps. By many accounts, Dunn was pushing for Hurd to become chairman by next spring anyway, so she may have been planning to leave the chairwoman title, and the pretexting/leak scandal just made Dunn push her agenda up and make a public announcement sooner than expected.