分析：惠普能走出泥沼吗？

The story of Hewlett-Packard, an outwardly staid technology company, has come to resemble the plotline of an improbable corporate soap opera.

从表面上看，惠普(HP)是一家稳重的科技企业，然而，它的故事却像一部怪诞的公司肥皂剧。

It has included, during the past decade, the firings of three chief executives, one after a probe into claims of sexual harassment; a salacious boardroom spying scandal that resulted in the resignation of its then-chairwoman; and a spate of highly controversial multibillion-dollar deals, including one that sparked a public feud between management and heirs of the company’s founders.

10年来惠普风波不断：先后解雇了3位首席执行官，其中有一位是因为涉嫌性骚扰受到调查后离职的；一起发生在董事会会议室的无耻窃听丑闻导致当时的女董事长辞职；发起一系列涉资数十亿美元并且备受争议的收购，其中一起交易导致管理层与公司创始人的继承者之间发生公开争执。

Now, to top it off, come claims of massive accounting distortion at Autonomy, the British software company that was the object of the latest of those deals. By the end of this week at least one criminal investigation had been launched into the affair, by the FBI.

现在重头戏来了，根据惠普的说法，其于近期收购的英国软件公司Autonomy存在大规模违规会计操作。至少现在联邦调查局(FBI)已经展开了相关的刑事调查。

This trail of destruction has done more than shred management reputations and clean out boardrooms. There has also been a significant financial toll. The latest $8.8bn charge this week, largely caused by the Autonomy mess, has lifted the total write-offs at HP during the past year, taken against a decade of acquisitions, to $19.7bn.

这一连串毁灭性事件不仅葬送了管理层的名誉、赶走了董事会成员，还令惠普付出了沉重的财务代价。加上最近这笔88亿美元成本（主要是Autonomy混乱局面引发的），惠普过去一年针对过去十年收购成果的减记总额达到197亿美元。

And that does not even count a seemingly endless round of restructuring charges that have topped $100m in every one of the past 13 years, reaching $11bn in all.

这还没有算上一笔笔似乎没完没了的重组账单。过去13年里，惠普每年的重组费用都超过1亿美元，总计已达110亿美元。

The numbers are a stark reminder of what has befallen a company that played a central part in the postwar rise of Silicon Valley. HP has become ensnared in an endless cycle of deals, reorganisations and job cuts, as successive managers have tried, and failed, to jolt its moribund business back to life.

这些数字提醒人们，这家在战后硅谷崛起过程中发挥中流砥柱作用的企业，经历了何种起伏波折。由于每一任管理者都试图推动如死水般停滞不前的业务重焕生机，却又徒劳无功，惠普陷入了收购、重组、裁员的无休止循环之中。

Meg Whitman, the former eBay boss and Republican candidate for governor of California, took the helm last year with a promise to break this pattern. Yet, contemplating the Autonomy scandal, she ruefully admitted this week: “When we have an event like this, you have to work harder. It doesn’t make it any easier.

去年，eBay前首席执行官、共和党加州州长候选人梅格·惠特曼(Meg Whitman)掌舵惠普，誓要打破这种模式。然而，最近谈及Autonomy丑闻时她语气低落地承认：“在发生这样的事情以后，我们必须更加努力工作。这没有让事情变简单。

No wonder Mike Lynch, the former Autonomy boss, has been having a field-day in the media, defending himself against charges of accounting impropriety by turning the fire back on to HP.

无怪乎Autonomy前老板迈克·林奇(Mike Lynch)会对媒体大吐苦水，就会计违规指控为自己辩护，并把枪口转向了惠普。

“There is a part of the HP management that would like to blame other people for failures, he told the Financial Times. “They ought to look to themselves.

他告诉英国《金融时报》：“惠普管理层有些人就是喜欢把失败的责任推到别人身上，他们应该在自己身上找原因。

Deserved or not, Mr Lynch’s barb will have hit a nerve with long-suffering shareholders. As HP’s reputation as the company that cannot shoot straight has grown to almost legendary proportions, its stock price has collapsed. Though third to Samsung and Apple in the ranks of global technology companies judged by sales, HP’s stock market value has slumped to $23.5bn, from more than $100bn in early 2010.

不管合理与否，林奇的刺耳言语将刺激长期备受困扰的股东们的神经。作为一家不再坦诚的公司，惠普的美誉已经淡然无存，其股价也已经暴跌。按照销量计，惠普是仅次于三星(Samsung)和苹果(Apple)的全球第三大科技公司，但其市值从2010年初的超过1000亿美元跌至如今的235亿美元。

“Every time there’s a disaster, the management says it’s the last person who was responsible – but it’s the shareholders who keep holding the bag, over and over, said Charles Elson, a professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “At some point, the music has to stop.

特拉华大学(University of Delaware)公司治理教授查尔斯·埃尔森(Charles Elson)表示：“每次发生灾难，管理层就说前任应该为此负责，但最终承受损失的是股东，每次都是这样。在某个时刻，音乐必须停止。

Ms Whitman, already fighting long odds in her effort to turn HP round, now finds herself with another crisis on her hands. It doesn’t help that she was among the directors who unanimously backed CEO Léo Apotheker last year when he proposed the Autonomy acquisition. The exorbitant price, about 80 per cent more than Wall Street had thought the company was worth before HP showed up, was a big part of the reason that Mr Apotheker was later shown the door.

已经在努力扭转惠普颓势（虽然胜算不大）的惠特曼发现，又有一场危机在等着她。前任首席执行官李艾科(Léo Apotheker)去年提议收购Autonomy时，董事会一致予以支持，惠特曼当时也是董事会成员之一。惠普出价过高是后来李艾科被扫地出门的主要原因。在惠普现身之前，华尔街认为Autonomy不值那么高的价格，惠普的报价比华尔街估值高出80%以上。

Ms Whitman now tries to distance herself and other directors from the decision, putting the blame squarely on the former CEO. “We decided to vote for what he thought was the right thing to do, she says. “We thought it was a high price. You do rely on the CEO that you hired.

现在，惠特曼试图说明自己和其他董事与这一决策无关，把过错全部推到前任首席执行官身上。她说：“我们决定投票支持他认为是正确的事情。我们认为出价确实高了，但我们得仰仗我们雇佣的首席执行官。

Absolving HP’s directors of responsibility for this latest debacle may not be so easy. In their eagerness to pull off a deal that seemed to promise a partial answer to HP’s business challenges, they failed to dig as deeply as they should into possible problems at Autonomy, according to critics. That is despite warnings from some analysts about suspect accounting.

为惠普董事开脱在最近这起事件中应负的责任可能并不容易。批评人士指出，当初惠普董事迫不及待地完成这笔收购，因为收购似乎有望在一定程度上解决惠普在业务上面临的挑战，但他们未能深入挖掘Autonomy可能存在问题，而这正是董事会应尽的责任。部分分析人士指出Autonomy的会计操作存在可疑之处，但惠普董事会完全无视这些警告。

“It was a desperation move and I think things were maybe overlooked, said Mark Williams, an academic at Boston University’s School of Management. Advisers, including the company’s accountants and investment bankers, also slipped, says David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, although he adds that some of the blame rests with HP’s management and board, “for not asking enough questions or spotting signs of trouble.

波士顿大学(Boston University)管理学院的马克·威廉斯(Mark Williams)表示：“这是孤注一掷之举，我认为有些事情可能被忽视了。哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)教授戴维·约菲(David Yoffie)表示，包括该公司内部会计师和投行家在内的顾问们也犯了过错。不过他补充道，部分责任应由惠普管理层和董事会承担，“因为它们没有提出足够多的问题，也没有发现麻烦的迹象。

Ms Whitman can at least point to a thorough board overhaul, undertaken just before the Autonomy deal, that was designed to put paid to HP’s reputation of bad governance once and for all. And she claims a more direct personal management style that has led to the latest directors being better informed than their predecessors.

惠特曼至少还能提出要对董事会实施全面改革，并在收购Autonomy前夕开始实施。改革旨在一劳永逸地洗清惠普在公司治理方面表现欠佳的坏名声。她自称拥有更加直接的个人管理风格，因此，与前任管理风格相比，新晋董事们能够更方便全面地获取信息。

“I tell my board everything, she says. “That’s quite a different board management style than, I think, my predecessors.

她说：“我把一切都告诉董事会。我认为，这是与我前任完全不同的董事会管理风格。

“HP probably had more governance problems than any large company in America but Meg cleaned house in 2011, says Mr Yoffie. “It is hard to ascribe deeper systemic governance problems when the board and the CEO are new.

约菲表示：“惠普在治理方面的问题可能比其他任何一家美国大型企业都多，但2011年梅格整顿了一番。如果董事会和首席执行官都是新任的，那就很难把深层的系统性治理问题归咎于他们。

Whether justified or not, meanwhile, the accounting scandal has contributed to a public perception of HP as a dysfunctional company let down by inadequate leadership. As Ms Whitman herself conceded, “there have been questions going back to the beginning of the [last] decade about failures in the HP boardroom. Those will linger.

不管合理与否，会计丑闻都使公众进一步认为，惠普是一家因为领导层不胜任而走上下坡路、机能失调的企业。惠特曼本人也承认，在惠普董事会失职的事情上，“有些问题可以追溯到10年前。这些问题还会继续困扰惠普。

Ms Whitman must now prevent the Autonomy debacle from derailing her efforts at a turnround. Wall Street has voted with its feet: the stock market wiped 10 per cent off HP’s bargain-basement stock price on the news of the Autonomy debacle. This week’s news “adds further weight to the overall view that they are not really competent enough to turn this company around, says Richard Windsor, a former analyst.

如今，惠特曼必须阻止Autonomy丑闻毁掉她重振惠普的努力。华尔街已经用脚投票了：传出Autonomy丑闻后，惠普已经跌至低位的股价进一步被抹去10%。曾从事分析师工作的理查德·温莎(Richard Windsor)表示，这次丑闻“再次助长了关于他们不具备足够的能力扭转惠普困境的观点。

The catalogue of HP’s problems makes daunting reading. One of the arguments for conglomerates has always been that they offer investors greater stability: if one part of the business is losing money, others will be doing better and help even out the performance. HP, however, is a conglomerate in which all the cylinders have stopped firing at once.

惠普的一连串问题令人触目惊心。人们支持综合性大型企业的一个理由通常是，对投资者来说，这类企业具有更高的稳定性：如果一部分业务亏损，另一部分经营良好的业务能够平衡业绩。然而，惠普这家综合企业的所有气缸都同时熄火了。

Its giant PC division, struggling with a secular downturn as customers turn to tablets, was further dented last year by Mr Apotheker’s public musing over whether to sell the business. Its IT services operation has struggled ever since the $13.9bn acquisition four years ago of EDS, leading to an $8bn writedown of its own in August. And in the servers and hardware it sells to corporate IT departments, HP has long suffered from a creeping commoditisation that has hurt profit margins.

由于平板电脑逐渐流行，惠普庞大的PC部门长期下滑，去年李艾科公开透露正在考虑是否卖掉PC部门，使该业务受到进一步冲击。其IT服务部门自4年前以139亿美元收购电子数据系统公司(EDS)以后就举步维艰，导致今年8月份自身减记了80亿美元。而惠普面向企业IT部门的服务器和硬件业务长期以来为缓慢的商品化趋势所累，利润率受损。

Even the one division whose profits had long bailed out the rest of the company, based on ink-jet printers, is facing decline. With customers printing fewer photographs on their home PCs as they turn to the cloud, sales of ink cartridges – the cash cow that funded HP for more than a decade – are under pressure.

惠普有一个部门利润相对丰厚，长期以来支撑了整个企业的其他业务，即喷墨打印机业务。然而，即便是这个部门也在面临衰退。由于顾客转向使用云端服务，在家里用电脑打印照片的少了，墨盒销量面临压力。而十余年来墨盒业务一直是支撑惠普发展的财源。

As Ms Whitman says: “This is an enormous company with an extraordinary list of challenges. Her remedy: stop the dealmaking, which has left HP deeply in debt, and get back to doing the basic research and development needed to give the company back a technology edge lost during a long period of under-investment by previous management.

正如惠特曼所言：“这是一家面临大量挑战的庞大企业。她的药方如下：停止收购，因为收购使惠普负债累累；回归能使公司重获科技优势的基础研发工作。长期以来，由于上一届管理层在基础研发领域的投资不足，惠普丢掉了技术领先地位。

Having cleared the decks with a series of write-offs, including at Autonomy, she now faces two possible futures. In one, says Frank Gillett, an analyst at Forrester Research, HP will “soldier on, there’s nothing that will force an immediate change in their structure – but there’s no quick fix to their problems either. Ms Whitman has asked shareholders for five years to complete a turnround, an almost unimaginably long time given the short horizon of most investors.

通过一系列减记（包括针对Autonomy的减记）做好准备以后，现在她面临两条可能的道路。福里斯特调查公司(Forrester Research)分析师弗朗克·吉勒特(Frank Gillett)表示，一种是惠普将“勇往直前，没有什么能够立刻改变它们的架构——但它们的问题不可能马上解决。惠特曼要求股东给她5年时间扭转惠普，但考虑到多数投资者目光都不长，5年的时间久得几乎难以想象。

Like other analysts, Mr Gillett also says that HP has promising new technologies it is nurturing – including from smaller acquisitions – and the main challenge will be to overcome the perceptions of failure that dog the company, made all the worse by the Autonomy news.

吉勒特像其他的分析人士一样，也表示惠普正在培育的新技术有前途——其中包括来自于小型收购的成果，惠普的主要挑战是克服萦绕公司内部的失败观，这种想法因Autonomy丑闻而更加严重了。

Alternatively, however, the weight of the past could prove too much and Ms Whitman may be forced to sell assets or even break up the company.

另一种前景是，历史的包袱过于沉重，惠特曼或许将被迫出售部分资产，甚至分拆惠普。

“People just have no confidence that management has made the right strategic decisions to turn this company around and invest for growth – it’s trading on the assumption that HP will fail, says Richard Windsor, a Nomura analyst and author of the Radio Free Mobile blog.

野村证券(Nomura)分析师、Radio Free Mobile博客的作者理查德·温莎(Richard Windsor)表示：“管理层能否做出正确的战略决策扭转这家公司的处境，通过投资实现增长，人们对此没有信心。目前其股价走势正基于惠普将破产的假设。

The HP chief completely rules out the break-up option. “There isn’t a Plan B, she insists. “I’m confident we can turn this company around.

惠特曼则完全排除分拆的可能。她坚称：“没有B计划。我有信心我们能够扭转公司。

But in the wake of the latest bombshell from a company now notorious for having America’s most dysfunctional boards, such assurances risk sounding increasingly hollow.

但在这家如今以拥有美国最不健全董事会而臭名昭著的公司爆出最近这起丑闻以后，这种保证听起来益发空洞。