Wealth destruction - the HP way

Is Hewlett-Packard the greatest corporate train wreck of all time?

Over two years, $65bn in market value has been atomised at HP. Other companies easily surpass it on this metric. Most of these blow-ups don't fit into quite the same category as HP, though. Start with the frauds. WorldCom was worth $180bn before wiping out shareholders in bankruptcy, but it was making up numbers rather than destroying real wealth with operational mistakes.

Yes, dodgy accounting is alleged to have inflated Autonomy's value before HP bought it, but the scale of any invented profits at Autonomy would probably pale beside the amount HP simply overpaid for the British software company ... READ MORE

Released by the Financial Times - 27 December 2012