The Letter That Got HP's CEO Fired: The Mark Hurd Scandal

Editor's note: this page previously carried verbatim excerpts of the complaint letter. It has been replaced with an original summary of the case.

On August 6, 2010, Mark Hurd resigned as CEO of Hewlett-Packard — one of the most abrupt falls in corporate America that year, and one triggered not by earnings but by a letter.

The letter came from Jodie Fisher, a former actress who had worked as an HP marketing contractor, hosting executive events. In June 2010, through her attorney, Fisher alleged that Hurd had sexually harassed her — describing, among other things, unwanted physical contact at meetings and dinners she said left her frightened.

HP's board hired outside counsel to investigate. The investigation's conclusions were carefully parsed: it found no violation of HP's sexual harassment policy, but it did find that Hurd had submitted inaccurate expense reports related to his encounters with Fisher — mischaracterizing the business purpose of meetings and dinners. For the board, that was enough. Hurd's conduct, the board said, had undermined his credibility and impaired his ability to lead. He resigned; the company paid him a separation package reportedly worth tens of millions.

Hurd, who was married with two children, denied the harassment allegations while acknowledging the expense-report issues. Within weeks, he resurfaced as co-president of Oracle — a hire by Larry Ellison that was widely read as a rebuke to HP's board.

The letter itself became public later, and its publication kept the story alive well past the resignation — a reminder of how, in the internet era, the documents behind a corporate scandal rarely stay sealed. The Hurd case became a template for a new kind of CEO exit: not the accounting fraud of an earlier era, but the personal-conduct investigation, where the expense report is the tripwire and the board's tolerance is the real story.