After 100,000 lost jobs, $19bn in write-offs, $10bn of restructuring charges and a series of corporate spin-offs, the dismemberment of the world’s most disparate tech conglomerate is almost complete. For decades, #HewlettPackard was an emblem of US tech innovation. Started in a garage (the origin of Silicon Valley’s favourite creation myth), it went on to ride a succession of new tech waves, from #UNIX servers to laser printing. But after falling behind over the past 20 years, a series of spin-offs is about to leave it a shadow of the tech giant it once was. @MegWhitman, the former #eBay boss who has spent six years as chief executive, tries to sound philosophical. “These big, iconic companies, not just in tech but across the landscape — in order to survive, you have to reinvent yourself,” she says. Few, however, have undergone such drastic surgery.  HP was the product of acquisitions by a succession of chief executives since the start of this century, each with a different vision for how to regain relevance in a fast-changing tech world. The deals included Carly Fiorina’s controversial purchase of PC maker Compaq, which led to a public feud with the company’s founding families; Mark Hurd’s acquisitions of IT services company EDS, the Palm handset business and a collection of software companies; and Léo Apotheker’s disastrous overpayment in the $11bn deal for UK software company Autonomy, which Ms Whitman later accused of having artificially inflated its figures, an allegation its former management has strongly denied.  In all, the dealmaking over the past 16 years has cost HP about $70bn. That is more than the combined value of the two main companies that survive it: PC and printer business HP Inc, and enterprise tech company Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which are worth $32bn and $29bn respectively. After the spinout of EDS, HPE’s software division will be spun off and combined with the UK’s Micro Focus officially from September 1. Ms Whitman, herself one of the board members who approved the Autonomy purchase, at first turned her face against a break-up and reversed Mr Apotheker’s plan to carve out the PC division into a separate company. “When I got here, it took me a while to understand it,” she says, before she realised the sheer complexity of the business and a lack of sufficient synergies left little choice, dooming HP to the fate of many conglomerates before it. Selling data centre technology and PCs are “classic different businesses,” she adds.
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