When the board of HP, the world’s largest computer-maker, unveiled plans to restructure, it expected the company’s shares to suffer; but not to crash by 20%. HP’s bosses thought investors would love their plan to spin off the firm’s low-margin personal-computer (PC) business, but be wary of their plan to buy Autonomy, a British software-maker, for a handsome $10.3 billion. In fact, they hated both ideas. On August 19th, the day after the announcement, they wiped $12 billion off HP’s market value.One problem was that the announcement left unclear what HP wanted to do with its PC unit and why exactly it intends to pay so much for Autonomy. Another factor was that many of the firm’s shareholders are short-termists, who were scared away by lowered revenue and profit forecasts. But the big problem is that Léo Apotheker, HP’s newish boss, is taking a huge gamble. He is trying to follow the example of IBM, by reducing HP’s dependence on hardware and pushing up into software and services.
http://www.economist.com/node/21526920