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HP's chairman Ray Lane has accused Mark Hurd of repeatedly lying to the board of directors in an angry letter to the New York Times.

Lane was writing in response to an opinion piece in the paper which suggested HP's new boss, Léo Apotheker, formerly boss of SAP, was guilty of worse misbehaviour than Hurd. The article said Apotheker was clearly aware of the theft of intellectual property by SAP from Oracle - the long-running TomorrowNow case.

In response, Lane said Hurd "lacked the trust and integrity needed to lead a public a company. Even Mr Hurd publicly acknowledged that he failed to uphold those necessary standards."

The letter read: "Mr Hurd violated the trust of the Board by repeatedly lying to them in the course of an investigation into his conduct. He violated numerous elements of HP’s Standards of Business Conduct and he demonstrated a serious lack of integrity and judgment. The Board was unanimous in its decision that he must go, including the seven directors Mr Hurd recruited to the Board".

The original opinion piece is here, and the letter is here, via Kara Swisher because I've entirely failed to find it on the NYTimes site...

This cat fight could run and run - last week saw GE's Jack Welch accusing the HP board of failing in its primary duty. ®