Walter Hewlett, the son of one of the founders of Hewlett-Packard Co. lost his seat on the company"s board of directors on Friday after shareholders approved a new slate that deliberately excluded him because of his bid to overturn the merger with Compaq Computer Corp.
The changing of the guard at HP"s sparsely attended annual meeting marked the first time in the 63-year history of Hewlett-Packard that no member of the founding families had a seat on the board.
The Hewlett and Packard families -- with about 18 percent of HP stock -- strongly opposed the $18 billion merger that Chief Executive Carly Fiorina championed in a hard-fought and often nasty four-month proxy battle that culminated in a raucous March 19 vote, which HP says it won but which Hewlett is challenging.
Friday"s meeting was attended by about 300 shareholders in the same cavernous Silicon Valley concert hall that hosted the contentious merger vote where throngs of protesters held placards outside the hall and challenged Fiorina.
"I believe dissent should be respected and valued," shareholder Andy Black told Fiorina, one of two shareholders who questioned Walter Hewlett"s exclusion from the board, prompting the strongest applause of the day.
Fiorina said Hewlett had turned from a "dissenter" to an "adversary" when he filed suit to stop the merger after shareholders had voted, and in doing so had damaged HP"s reputation. "The shareholders have spoken and we must move on," she said.
Over 80 percent of the ballots were cast in favor of the slate of directors put forth by the company, Fiorina said.
Aside from the board election, the agenda did not address the contested merger. HP says it won the March 19 merger vote by a narrow margin, although the results have still not been officially certified.