A hot summer became even hotter at Hewlett-Packard Company when chief executive Mark Hurd resigned after being accused of sexual harassment. Fortunately, general counsel Michael Holston, who led the investigation into the claim, knows how to deal with the heat. His first job at HP was to help it recover from a corporate spying scandal that felled the company’s previous GC.
The latest drama at the Palo Alto–based tech giant began on July 29, when Hurd received a letter from a former HP consultant accusing him of sexual harassment. Hurd passed the letter to Holston, who started a probe with help from outside counsel at Covington & Burling. Though the investigation cleared Hurd of the harassment allegation, it found that he had violated other policies. On August 6 Hurd gave Holston a signed, nine-page “separation agreement” that ended the CEO’s five-year reign at the company.
