HP Won’t Renominate Director, Citing Leaks

Hewlett-Packard Co. said Tuesday that director George Keyworth had leaked information on board deliberations to the media before the ouster of Chief Executive Carly Fiorina in February 2005 and that he wouldn’t be renominated.

Chairwoman Patricia Dunn began investigating boardroom leaks after Fiorina was fired and will provide details in a regulatory filing today, said Ryan Donovan, a spokesman for the Palo Alto-based company.

Keyworth, a director of Hewlett-Packard since 1986, was a source of the leaks and won’t be put up for reelection to the board next year, Donovan said without elaborating. The investigation led venture capitalist Tom Perkins to quit the board in protest in May. He accused Hewlett-Packard of illegally obtaining phone records as part of its probe.

“It’s an inopportune time for corporate governance issues like this to crop up because it takes away from the turnaround that’s going on,” said Michael Cuggino, CEO of San Francisco-based Pacific Heights Asset Management, which owns 120,000 shares of Hewlett-Packard. “As a shareholder, I’m not happy about that.”