Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Meg Whitman, the company’s board and former CEO Leo Apotheker, were sued by an investor alleging that mismanagement and botched acquisitions have destroyed shareholder value.

Executives have failed “in their most fundamental stewardship responsibilities owed to HP,” resulting in a series of mishaps including bribery probes, the hiring and firing of Apotheker and an $8.8 billion writedown in 2012 of the Autonomy Corp. acquisition, shareholder A.J. Copeland said in a complaint in federal court in San Francisco.

Commercial printer equipment installations and other news from Printing Impressions’ February 2014 edition, featuring Marshall & Bruce Printing, BPI Media Group, Mountain Ink Printing and Melcher Printing, Primary Color

Intricately shaped, dimensional direct mailers. In-line cold foiling. Digital printing with special UV texture effects or glitter. Several print shops profiled in this issue have built unique business models to separate themselves from the pack.

Chasing technology can be time consuming, expensive and frustrating. Imagine being the first tenant in an exclusive, gated community—the quiet, the beauty, the excitement of it all—then, within a year, you become knee-deep in neighbors. It no longer seems special when the masses join the party, does it?

SCOTTSDALE, AZ—Rod Key, a prominent, longtime industry figure who perhaps made his greatest impact as a founder of the HP users group Dscoop, died suddenly Monday at the age of 47.

HP and Dscoop have created the Rod Key Memorial Scholarship to commemorate the significant contributions Rod Key made during his career in the printing industry.

For those printers that ply their craft in the book manufacturing industry, change has become a fact of life. "Our company is 120 years old, but we've probably seen more changes in the last five years than we had in the previous 115," observes John Edwards, president and CEO of Edwards Brothers Malloy, a book and journal printing specialist based in Ann Arbor, MI.

In HP's previous quarterly earnings reports filed with the SEC, it warned investors that the company might get rid of more than 29,000 employees.

In its annual report filed on Monday, it made the bigger layoff official, declaring it would cut 34,000 jobs.

The silver lining for current employees is that HP has already done most of the cutting. As of October 31, 2013, HP had eliminated approximately 24,600 positions of the 34,000 it expects to cut, the company said in its annual report.

PALO ALTO, CA—Technology provider HP says it is fully committed to its HP Indigo customers, channels and partners and will continue to vigorously defend its brand and intellectual property (IP) against theft, as well as the actions of illegal dealers.

HP is actively combating black market sales of its products and pursuing companies found to be in violation of the law. On Dec. 4, the New York City Police Department executed an enforcement action in New York City, seizing approximately $400,000 of stolen HP Indigo supplies destined for sale on the black market.