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Hewlett-Packard chief executive officer Mark Hurd, one of the highest-profile CEOs in America, resigned Friday following a sexual harassment claim against him and the company.

HP said an investigation found Hurd didn’t violate its sexual harassment policy. But he did violate its standards of conduct policy, the company said.

HP (HPQ, Fortune 500) shares were down more than 9% in after-hours trading following a slight decline in regular action.

Executives said Hurd, who is married, failed to tell the board about a personal relationship with a female marketing contractor who was hired by his office. He repeatedly filed inaccurate expense account reports in a bid to keep the relationship secret, HP said.

"It was about integrity and honesty," general counsel Michael Holston said on a conference call with analysts and investors.

Hurd conceded in the HP press release that "there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP," Hurd said.

The Palo Alto, Calif., company said its chief financial officer, Cathie Lesjak, will take over as CEO on an interim basis.

HP will search for a new CEO and will consider candidates from within the company as well as outsiders, the company said. It didn’t give a timeline, but said Lesjak wouldn’t take the full-time CEO job.

Hurd has been credited with reviving Hewlett-Packard since joining the company in 2005 following the tumultuous tenure of his predecessor, Carly Fiorina. Hewlett-Packard shares have more than doubled since he took the reins in April 2005.

Hurd has been held in high regard on Wall Street Payday advance. He has been extremely successful in helping to boost the company’s profit margins.

To allay fears that his departure was financially driven, HP also said in the release announcing Hurd’s resignation that it expected to exceed analysts’ earnings expectations for the fiscal year.

Asked about the timing of that statement, Lesjak said on a conference call with reporters said it was "important for people to fully appreciate the announcement today has nothing to do with the operational performance of the company." She added that the resignation was "all about Mark’s behavior and judgment."

HP said the investigation started June 30, a day after the company received a letter from a lawyer representing a marketing contractor employed by the company. The company said the investigation found a "pattern" of expense account improprieties by Hurd, but wouldn’t offer more detail except to say the amounts weren’t material.

That’s not surprising, given that HP bills itself as the world’s biggest information technology company, with fiscal 2009 revenue of $115 billion.

HP said it entered a legal agreement with Hurd "related to his exit." It didn’t say whether this agreement would preclude litigation with him.

Hurd, who has been making upwards of $30 million annually, could collect $53 million in severance pay, stock and restricted units under his separation plan with the company, HP said in its most recent proxy filing. 

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The leaders of the Group of Eight world economic powers have taken the first steps toward a "broad consensus" on the need to balance growth with shrinking deficits, a senior White House official said Friday.

President Obama attended a luncheon at the G-8 summit in Toronto to discuss economic policies with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom, according to the official.

The official acknowledged that there were different "points of emphasis" among the leaders at the meeting, which is in its early stages. But he said there is a "convergence of views" and that the president is "confident" about the upcoming meetings of the Group of 20 nations, which includes China, India and other developing economic powers.

"There is broad consensus among G-8 leaders on how to maintain durable growth while reaffirming our shared commitment to fiscal consolidation going forward," the official said.

President Obama has stressed the need to keep economic stimulus measures in place to prevent a global slowdown. But European nations have been moving toward more conservative fiscal policies as the region grapples with an ongoing debt crisis.

In a letter to G-20 leaders sent earlier this week, the president wrote that safeguarding and strengthening the economic recovery should be "our highest priority in Toronto lowest fee payday loans."

"This means that we should reaffirm our unity of purpose to provide the policy support necessary to keep economic growth strong," he wrote. "In fact, should confidence in the strength of our recoveries diminish, we should be prepared to respond again as quickly and as forcefully as needed to avert a slowdown in economic activity."

Meanwhile, European nations have been cutting back on public spending and raising taxes to cope with massive budget deficits. The euro has been in a tailspin as investors bet against the proposed austerity measures and worry the European Union could slide back into recession.

On Tuesday, the United Kingdom unveiled one of its harshest budgets in decades. The five-year budget, widely anticipated by fiscal experts, may hold lessons for U.S. policymakers who will face similar quandaries about how to rein in debt.

"The president sees deficit reduction as part of a long-term growth strategy," the White House official said. 

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Hawaii Biotech, a company that has been struggling to reorganize in bankruptcy court, will go up for auction next month.

A request to convert the company’s Chapter 11 filing to a Chapter 11 363(b) asset sale provision, which is what GM and Chrysler used for their recent reorganizations, was accepted by bankruptcy court Judge Robert Faris on Monday.

The auction is scheduled for July 19, and bidding interest and notification is due to the company by July 12.

“We currently have a stalking horse bid in for the company,” said CEO Elliot Parks. “Our goal is to keep the company intact and keep trials going easy payday loans.”

Hawaii Biotech filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 11, at which time it claimed between $1 million and $10 million in assets and liabilities. The company listed nearly 400 unsecured creditors, with its largest being its landlord, Redico. Its claim was for $500,929 in unpaid rent, according to PBN research.

Hawaii Biotech, which has 23 full-time employees, entered into human clinical trials for West Nile and dengue fever vaccines within the past two years.

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Decades of booming personal computer sales helped Intel become a chipmaking behemoth, but consumers’ rapid shift away from PCs may leave the tech giant out in the cold.

As Intel’s old marketing campaign proclaimed, the company’s chips are "inside" practically every kind of computer, from PCs to Macintoshes to netbooks. But PCs are yesterday’s news. Mobile Internet devices like smart phones and tablets are where all of the growth is but Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) hasn’t been able to gain much traction.

Where Intel has so far failed, a little-known British company called ARM has had roaring success. ARM is to mobile devices what Intel is to computers — the company develops and licenses the basic chip designs for practically all of the world’s cell phones, smart phones and Apple’s (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPad.

Tech analysts left and right are proclaiming that the mobile device market will outpace or perhaps even replace the PC market in the next five years. In fact, the market grew 56.7% during the first quarter, according to IDC.

Could a tiny British company that took in just less than $500 million in sales last year really be in a better position to take advantage of that forecasted growth than Intel, which had over $35 billion in revenue during the same period?

"Few companies have championed and invested in the shift to wireless computers and PC-like devices like Intel has," said Intel spokesman Bill Kircoss.

Analysts also say it’s premature to dismiss Intel. "ARM is ahead right now, but I’ve become smart enough to know that Intel can’t be counted out," said John Bruggeman, CMO of Cadence Design Systems. "Intel will figure it out, or it’ll spend its way out."

How we got here

Next to Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), Intel has perhaps been the greatest benefactor of the PC boom of the past three decades. Intel’s patent on the x86 processor, which is required to run Windows, helped it become the biggest chipmaker in the world. Intel designed its chips for performance and power, making PCs lightning-fast and able to perform multiple complex tasks simultaneously.

ARM, meanwhile targeted a different, smaller market. By designing chips that use as little power as possible, ARM made its way into practically every cell phone on the market (about 20 billion mobile devices over the past 19 years, according to the company). Unlike Intel, ARM doesn’t actually make chips, but licenses designs to 220 companies around the world, including giants like Qualcomm (QCOM, Fortune 500), Texas Instruments (TXN, Fortune 500), Nvidia (NVDA), Samsung and Apple.

Both companies were humming along until Apple introduced the iPhone in the summer of 2007. The iPhone was years ahead of any other phone on the market at the time, allowing users to carry a device in their pockets that performed PC tasks.

"There was a huge technological disruption that took place at the launch of the iPhone," said Bruggeman. "Now, mobile is the high volume category and it’s the only one that matters. The only question is will it be Intel-based or ARM-based?"

Because of its vast experience in the mobile sector, ARM won the contract to design the iPhone’s processor and has since appeared in a large number of smart phones. Apple’s iPad also uses an ARM-licensed chip.

Atom bomb

The Intel vs. ARM battle is far from over. Mobile devices are rapidly improving, but none yet offer the same deep, rich Internet experience of a PC or run all of the complex tasks of a computer.

Next year, Intel plans to unveil a new "Atom" mobile device processor (code named "Moorestown"), which Intel thinks can outperform competitors and help it give ARM a run for its money.

First-generation Atom chips can be found in just about every netbook on the market. Though Intel offers the chips for smart phones, most devices with Intel inside only run the unsuccessful MeeGo platform. Intel so far has not been able to tap into the rampant success of Apple’s iPhone OS or Google’s (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android platform.

But the Atom 2 might change that. Though experts say Atom chips won’t soon be found in an iPhone, Intel recently demonstrated its Moorestown chip seamlessly running Android 2.1 at the Computex technology expo in Taipei.

"In just the past 30 days alone, we’ve expanded this chip line to cars, TVs, tablets and smartphones and plan to keep bringing new, and even more power-sipping Atoms to market," said Intel’s Kircoss.

Even ARM admits that its market dominance doesn’t mean that it has won.

"People don’t care what’s underneath, they just want to buy stuff that they think is cool," said Bob Morris, director of mobile computing at ARM. "Intel eventually will be successful in this area, though they’ll be one of many."

But there’s one potential hang up for Intel: Compared to its traditional PC chips, the profit margins for the Atom chip are atrocious. A small number of analysts even suggested that Intel would like the mobile market to go away.

"Maybe Intel doesn’t care who wins the mobile space," said Phani Saripella, analyst at Primary Global Research and a former Intel manager. "It might be better off defending its turf [on the higher end devices]."

Stay tuned. 

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Consumer borrowing posted an unexpected increase in March, only the second gain in the last 14 months. It could be a sign that households are feeling more confident about boosting spending, a key development needed to support a sustained economic recovery.

The Federal Reserve reported Friday that consumer borrowing rose by $1.95 billion in March, better than the $3.85 billion drop that economists had expected.

Consumer credit was also up in January, but other than those two gains, it has been falling steadily since February of last year as households have cut back on their borrowing to repair their battered balance sheets.

The March gain represented a 1 percent rise at an annual rate following a 3 percent drop in February and a 3.2 percent January increase savings account payday loans.

The strength came from a 3.9 percent jump in nonrevolving credit, which includes auto loans. Revolving credit, which covers credit card debt, actually fell by 4.5 percent, the 18th consecutive decline.

The overall increase of 1 percent pushed total credit up to $2.45 trillion at the end of March, down 3.4 percent from a year ago.

Economists are hoping that consumer borrowing will soon stabilize and resume growing, although they caution that the rebound will be restrained by tighter credit conditions imposed by many banks in the wake of the financial crisis.

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China overtook the United States in renewable energy investments for the first time ever in 2009, attracting nearly twice as many dollars and becoming the world’s largest market for clean energy projects.

Renewable energy investments in China - mostly wind farms - totaled $34.6 billion in 2009, according to report released Thursday by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In the United States, $18.6 billion was spent.

The report’s authors stressed it was the stable, long-term policies put forth by the Chinese government and easier access to credit that attracted the money, and said the numbers do not bode well for America.

"The United States’ competitive position is at risk in the emerging clean energy economy," Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Environment Group’s Global Warming Campaign, said in a statement.

The report noted that over 700,000 clean energy jobs have been created in the Untied States since 1998, and with so much money being invested in the alternative energy market, this was likely just the beginning.

But with the U.S. losing its dominance in renewable energy, future jobs could be on the line.

Cuttino urged U.S. lawmakers to put a price on carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted from burning fossil fuels. A price on carbon would make fossil fuels more expensive and renewables more competitive. She also said the country needs to mandate that utilities buy a certain percent of their power from renewable sources, and create stable, long-term subsidies for renewable energy.

China uses huge amounts of coal to generate electricity and has famously resisted putting a price on carbon dioxide. But the country does have an aggressive mandate that its utilities use more renewable energy.

There are several bills in Congress that would do what Cuttino is seeking but they face considerable resistance from lawmakers and the general public. Opponents either fear the measures would be too costly to the economy, don’t believe renewable energy is ready for prime time, or don’t think global warming is a major problem.

The investment tallies for China and the United States include all private investments in renewable energy projects, as well as money renewable energy firms raised in stock market offerings, venture capital and private equity deals bad credit pay day loans. They do not include government grants or corporate R&D, which in the United States totaled another $7 billion. How much China spent on government support and corporate R&D was not immediately available.

Globally

Worldwide the report said $162 billion was spent on renewable energy, down just 6.6% from the year before. That compares to a 19% drop in investment in the oil and gas industry, according to the report.

In 2010, Bloomberg New Energy Finance is expecting a 25% increase in renewable energy investments to $200 billion.

Asia, with economies that were less severely hit by the recession and easier access to money, saw a 37% increase in investments in 2009. In Europe and America’s harder hit economies and tighter capital markets, investments dropped 16% and 33% respectively.

In relation to the size of its economy, Spain saw the largest investment, 0.71% of its gross domestic product went into clean energy. Spain was followed by the United Kingdom, China and Brazil. The United States ranked 11th.

Most of the money spent on renewable energy is in the form of power projects, wind farms, solar arrays or other things that actually produce electricity. Only a small part is spent on R&D or capitalizing start-up companies.

Yet when it comes to innovation, the United States is still the world’s leader. The country attracted 60% of all venture capital money spent on renewable energy worldwide. Venture capital generally goes to start-up firms that hold the most promise for future technologies.

"We’re very good at creating companies," John Woolard, chief executive at solar power firm BrightSource Energy, said on a conference call discussing the report. "We’re not doing a very good job creating markets."  

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown will pledge today to make Britain’s tax system attractive to large multinational companies in an effort to secure the backing of business leaders before this year’s election.

Brown’s government will propose a set of principles that include promises to ensure new taxes aren’t too complex and a commitment to hold consultations before introducing new corporate taxes. The plan will be published by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling at a conference in London.

“By maintaining a world-class environment for business to do business we can attract the investment that will underpin our move from recession to recovery to growth,” Brown said in his weekly podcast yesterday.

Brown’s Labour Party and David Cameron’s Conservatives are competing to win credibility with business leaders before the election, which Labour Party documents suggest will be held on May 6. So far, the campaign has centered on which party has the best recipe for tackling Britain’s record peacetime budget deficit.

Darling began talks with company leaders in April 2008, establishing a panel of more than 10 executives from international companies who meet regularly with Treasury ministers and civil servants.

Brown, Darling and Business Secretary Peter Mandelson will be joined at the London conference by executives from companies including Bombardier Inc., China Merchants Bank Co. Ltd., Burberry Plc and Lockheed Martin Inc.

Bank Stakes

The Conservatives pledged yesterday to sell U.K. government stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc to voters as their support continued to slip in opinion polls.

The plan to sell shares at a discounted price, outlined by Conservative Treasury spokesman George Osborne, came as opinion polls show the party’s lead slipping after it called for spending cuts to start this year to reduce the deficit and the economy exited recession in the fourth quarter of 2009.

A poll by YouGov Plc in the Sunday Times newspaper showed the Conservative lead over Labour at its narrowest since December 2008.

YouGov said the Conservatives had the backing of 39 percent of those surveyed, down one percentage point from a month ago, while Labour were backed by 33 percent, up two points. Details of when the poll was taken and the margin of error weren’t given.

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Davenport, Iowa — Lee Enterprises, the publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other newspapers, painted an improved financial picture over a year ago for its shareholders Wednesday, citing better revenue trends and deeper-than-expected cost reductions.

Mary Junck, Lee chairman and chief executive, told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting that Lee newspapers and digital products are reaching nearly 7 of 10 adults weekly in its markets. Its newspapers also are reaching 6 of 10 younger readers, or those 18 to 29 years old.

"The effectiveness of our products, coupled with our intensive sales culture, continues to keep Lee ahead of the industry in advertising revenue performance," she said, adding that Lee has outperformed the industry every quarter throughout the recession.

Lee reported Wednesday that total revenue fell 9.2 percent in January from a year ago, the first time since 2008 that revenue didn’t show a double-digit decline. For the quarter ended Dec. 27, Lee’s revenue dropped 13.8 percent.

Carl Schmidt, Lee chief financial officer, reminded shareholders that a year ago, Lee predicted it would reduce its 2009 cash costs by $100 million. In reality, the company cut $147 million in cash costs, a decrease of 17.9 percent.

Among the cuts was retiree health care at the Post-Dispatch, Lee’s largest newspaper. The decision, announced in December, as well as ongoing union negotiations, prompted more than a dozen Post-Dispatch retirees to attend the annual meeting at Lee’s headquarters.

Several retirees quizzed Lee executives about the decision, expressing their dismay at the action.

Junck said Lee, as well as many newspaper companies, "had to make a lot of tough choices" in 2009.

Shannon Duffy, the business representative for the St. Louis Newspaper Guild, said the change affected 80 retirees, but the union fears the same change could be passed on to another 150 retirees represented by the contract now being renegotiated.

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Only 20 percent of Oregonians have earthquake insurance, even though Oregon is among the states at highest risk for a major earthquake, according to a survey by the state Department of Consumer and Business Services.

Standard home owner policies do not cover earthquakes, but optional earthquake coverage is readily available and relatively inexpensive, the department said.

“Consumers may want to think about their ability to rebuild if their house is destroyed in an earthquake,” said Cory Streisinger, director of the Department of Consumer and Business Services. “Insurance should be weighed as part of other earthquake preparations.”

Jan. 25 will mark the 310th anniversary of the last major Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, magnitude 9.0, centered 75 miles offshore. That temblor damaged the coastline from Northern California to Southern British Columbia, according to the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.

A 10,000-year geologic record shows these mega-quakes occur every 300 to 600 years, putting Oregon within the window of a major earthquake, said James Roddey, state earth sciences information officer.

Damaging earthquakes have also occurred within the past 16 years in different parts of the state, causing tens of millions of dollars worth of damage.

The Department of Consumer and Business Services Insurance Division last year surveyed 20 insurance companies that account for 80 percent of the home owner insurance premiums in the state.

It found:

• Home owners generally can buy earthquake insurance as an addition to their policy or as a separate policy. The few companies that do not offer earthquake insurance in Oregon typically refer clients to a company that sells stand-alone earthquake policies.
• Earthquake coverage is relatively inexpensive — often less than $300 a year for a $300,000 wood-frame home. Masonry homes are more expensive to insure.
• Owners of older houses may need to bolt their homes to the foundation or make other seismic upgrades before they can buy earthquake insurance.

Earthquake coverage generally features high deductibles. These typically amount to 10 percent or 15 percent of the amount covered by insurance. A home owner with a house insured for $300,000 and a 10 percent deductible would pay $30,000 before the policy would pay. Coverage for contents is separate.

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Internet security and naming services provider VeriSign Inc sees near-term pricing pressure in its online security certificates business, but expects to grow margins in 2010 by controlling costs, its top executive said.

The company has been hit by a slowdown in its SSL business — which enables secure e-commerce and communication on the Internet — where the annualized average unit revenue for VeriSign, GeoTrust and Thawte-branded certificates for the third quarter was $234, down 3 percent from the prior quarter.

“We will continue to see some ASP pressure for a while,” CEO Mark McLaughlin said in an interview with Reuters. “With the economy improving, that would start to abate.”

The authentication services business, which includes SSL, forms about 39 percent of VeriSign’s revenue. Naming services — VeriSign serves as the global registry for .com, .net, .tv, .cc, .name and .jobs domain names — makes up most of the rest.

The company was offering discounts for long-term customers to preserve the relationships, he said.

“We haven’t cut our prices, but we’re willing to have discussions around giving discounts,” McLaughlin said online cash advances. VeriSign’s rivals in the SSL business include GoDaddy.

“This is sort of a mixed blessing where the low end of the market is growing faster than the high end of the market,” McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin sees an improvement in margins in 2010.

“Into next year, we’ll continue with this tight expense control. We think that we should be able to continue to get some incremental improvement into next year.”

VeriSign has said it expects fourth-quarter operating margins to be in line with that of the third quarter, when it recorded operating margins, excluding items, of 38.6 percent.

The company, which has been implementing a restructuring strategy to sell its slower growing businesses, expects to sell its last remaining unit to be divested by the end of the year, McLaughlin said.

On November 5, VeriSign swung to a third-quarter profit, but its fourth-quarter revenue forecast fell short of Wall Street estimates.

(Editing by Anil D’Silva)

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