Hewlett-Packard Co. shocked investors in August 2011, when former CEO Leo Apotheker pulled the plug on the company’s much-touted WebOs operating system and signaled a wholesale shift in business strategy. A month later, Apotheker was ousted, and HP was hit with a securities fraud class action accusing the company of snookering shareholders into thinking it planned to build a vast “ecosystem” of millions of WebOs-enabled devices, including tablets, PCs and printers.
The plaintiffs held on long enough to force HP to the negotiating table, and now the company has reached an agreement to end the case for good. On Monday, attorneys for the shareholders at Motley Rice and Labaton Sucharow asked a judge to sign off on a $57 million settlement with HP, Apotheker and senior executive R. Todd Bradley. The deal must be approved by U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford in Santa Ana, Calif.
