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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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Ohio Attorney General Rich Cordray has struck a $725 million settlement with American International Group to resolve charges of bid-rigging, accounting fraud and other practices that officials said led investors nationwide to lose millions.

New York-based AIG through the settlement has agreed to put up $175 million upon preliminary court approval of the deal. According to information from Cordray's office, the company plans to fund the remaining $550 million of the settlement through stock offerings.

At the center of the settlement are a range of fraud allegations over the company’s conduct from October 1999 through April 2005. The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, State Teachers Retirement System and state Police and Fire Pension Fund served as lead plaintiffs in the national class-action suit, roots of which stretch back to the tenure of former Attorney General Jim Petro paperless payday loans.

The former AG sued AIG in 2004 after New York officials probed charges of bid-rigging among the firm and other insurers.

That probe uncovered new charges and led to the ouster of Hank Greenberg, AIG’s longtime CEO and a case against a reinsurer tied to AIG, General Reinsurance Corp. Four former General Reinsurance executives and a former AIG executive have since been convicted of conspiracy and fraud charges tied to a deal that allegedly helped AIG inflate its loss reserves.

A number of parties tied to AIG, including Greenberg, have struck settlements with Ohio totaling $284.5 million since the litigation began.

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Advanced Inquiry Systems Inc., a company developing a semiconductor testing technology, has raised $10 million in a Series C round from a group of investors, according to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The money will be used to help bring a product to market.

The Hillsboro company closed a $11 million Series B round last year, bringing its funding up to $33 million at the time.

The company has developed a proprietary silicon-based testing platform to enable lower cost testing of memory devices pay day advance.

The company’s previous investors include OVP Venture Partners, TL Ventures, Intel Capital, Applied Ventures, KT Ventures and Northwest Technology Ventures. The Series C round included a new undiscloved investor.

The company was founded in 2002. It declined to disclose revenue on its most recent SEC filing.

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Banner Corp. said it issued more than 85 million shares of stock at $2 per share in a recent stock offering and raised about $162 million, after discounts and commissions were deducted.

Last week, Walla Walla-based Banner (NASDAQ: BANR), parent of Banner Bank and Islanders Bank, said it “intends to use a significant portion of the net proceeds from the offering to strengthen Banner Bank’s regulatory capital ratios and to support managed growth . The company expects to use the remaining net proceeds for general working capital purposes.”

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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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The Latin Business Association is among the latest groups adding its support to those boycotting Arizona as thousands of people marched in protest of the state’s new immigration laws Saturday at Steele Indian School Park in Phoenix.

The group on Friday praised the National Minority Supplier Development Council in moving its location for the 2010 conference from Phoenix to Miami Beach.

“The Latin Business Association board and members continue to stand against Arizona’s SB1070 and applaud the efforts of numerous organizations who stood in solidarity to encourage the NMSDC to move its October conference payday advance lenders. I am certain it was not an easy step for the NMSDC to take, but it was the appropriate action in support of all minority business owners,” said Ruben Guerra, chairman of the Latin Business Association

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday he has concerns about a signature piece of Senate Democrats’ Wall Street reform package that cracks down on complex financial products.

Bernanke wrote about the consequences from a congressional ban preventing banks from trading the complex financial products, called derivatives, in a letter to key lawmakers.

"Forcing these activities out of insured depository institutions would weaken both financial stability and strong prudential regulation of derivative activities," Bernanke wrote to an author of the measure, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

Dodd worked with Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., on the measure, including the swaps ban, which ranks among the top hang-ups that could threaten final passage for the overall Wall Street reform bill.

Progress on the bill has been slow going, and the Senate will continue debating amendments at least through early next week, Dodd said Thursday.

The Fed chair’s concerns about the swaps ban are similar to those raised by other high profile regulators — former Fed chairman Paul Volcker and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair. They all stopped short of blasting the measure.

The tough crackdown in question is the brainchild of Sen. Lincoln, who is facing a contentious Democratic primary in Arkansas on Tuesday in her bid for re-election. The Senate isn’t expected to propose changes to the measure until after Tuesday, congressional aides and lobbyists say.

Congress generally wants to get tougher on derivatives, which are currently traded with no oversight and were a key reason for the taxpayer bailout of American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500). But lawmakers disagree about how much to regulate them.

The measure banning bank swaps goes farther than the so-called Volcker rule, named for the former Fed chief, that would only block some banks from doing such trades for their own purposes and accounts, called "proprietary trading."

The Lincoln proposal blocks banks from all derivatives if the banks want access to cheap emergency loans that the Federal Reserve can make as lender of last resort.

Bernanke said in the letter that banks use derivatives to shed risk that can arise in deals they make over interest rates, currency and other credit risks.

"Use of derivatives by depository institutions to mitigate risks in the banking business also provides important protection to the deposit insurance fund and taxpayers as well as to the financial system more broadly," Bernanke wrote.

A House bill that passed in December would allow all banks to trade derivatives in a more transparent way. However that bill also allows some trades between some banks and certain companies, such as airlines, to continue without regulation.

But Senate Democrats are tougher on derivatives, in the aftermath of fraud charges that the Securities and Exchange Commission levied against Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) for selling a complex mortgage-related derivative to investors while failing to tell them that a hedge fund was betting against the product.

When asked about negotiations on the derivatives piece on Thursday, Dodd said he understood that discussions were ongoing, but he wasn’t involved in them. 

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If you can’t fight the federal government, you may as well pay ‘em. Especially if you’re Goldman Sachs.

In recent days, Wall Street has been abuzz with speculation that Goldman attorneys have entered preliminary talks with the Securities and Exchange Commission with the hopes of settling the outstanding federal fraud charges now facing the company.

Executives at the New York City-based investment bank have offered similar hints.

"There are a myriad of opportunities out there and I won’t rule any of them out," Gary Cohn, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said at the conclusion of the firm’s annual shareholder meeting last week.

A settlement with the SEC would likely bring to an end at least some of the negative publicity Goldman has had to endure since regulators charged the company and one of its employees with defrauding investors in the sale of a complex mortgage investment dubbed "Abacus."

Determining just how much Goldman (GS, Fortune 500) might be on the hook for however, is not simple.

Some legal experts said that a settlement could exceed the $1 billion the SEC claims that investors lost on the deal. That’s due to the high-profile nature of the case and the lack of bargaining power Goldman may have with regulators.

"As a principal regulator, [the SEC] can negatively impact Goldman’s ongoing businesses," said David Desser, managing director of the Chicago-based Juris Capital, a privately-held fund that invests in commercial litigation. "That is a big hammer that no other litigant has against an adversary in court."

A penalty of more than $1 billion would rank as the largest SEC settlement in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley era, eclipsing the $800 million AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) paid to the agency to settle claims related to misstatement of financial results in 2006, according to NERA Economic Consulting.

Others suggest that the SEC may be willing to accept just a fraction of that amount, citing some of its recent settlements as well as the mountain of other enforcement cases the agency has to deal with.

But what Goldman ultimately pays may prove to be of secondary importance.

After all, for a company that is expected to earn $13 billion in pre-tax profits in the next three quarters, according to Thomson Reuters, any fine will likely be quite manageable, especially if a settlement allows Goldman to avoid being in the public spotlight as much it has during the last year.

Instead, legal experts suggest that Goldman may be particularly fearful of any additional demands the SEC may have as part of a settlement.

The agency could, for example, require the company to create greater distance between its mortgage underwriting and trading operations or provide greater transparency to clients about its different investment products.

"Part of it was the difficulty in valuing these derivatives," said Elizabeth Nowicki, a securities law professor at Boston University, who formerly served as a staff attorney for the SEC. "It might be reasonable for the SEC to insist on some best practices disclosures regarding valuation."

Such a move would not be a major departure for the SEC. In the high-profile settlement it reached earlier this year with Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) over bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch employees, the banking giant was required to implement a number of corporate governance measures through 2013, including giving its shareholders an advisory vote on the pay of its executives.

Any deal that is struck between Goldman and the SEC might also resolve the fate of Fabrice Tourre, the 31-year-old French trader who helped broker the now infamous investment deal.

Most experts agree that if Tourre is included in a settlement, chances are he could face a fine as well as a suspension from the securities industry for as much as a year.

Goldman Sachs, which has already moved to distance itself from the London-based employee, will most certainly be looking for ways to insulate itself from any future legal action.

Experts said Goldman could also push the SEC to include language in any settlement that Goldman neither "admits nor denies" the SEC charges.

James Cox, a securities law professor at Duke University, said that the company might also attempt to seek a so-called "global settlement," which would absolve the company of any outstanding current or future federal or state lawsuits over the 2007 Abacus transaction or similar mortgage deals.

That would at least alleviate some of the legal headaches the firm is currently facing.

In two separate securities filings this month, Goldman acknowledged it now faces a variety of related lawsuits, as well as investigations from a number of international regulatory agencies, including Britain’s Financial Services Authority, over the sale of mortgage-related investments.

"[Goldman] wants peace and assurance going forward," said Cox.  

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The Hawaii Convention Center has won another Prime Site Award from Facilities & Destinations magazine.

This is the center’s 12th consecutive award from the trade publication. It is one of 27 convention facilities managed by SMG nationwide to receive the award.

The award is determined by members of the meetings and conventions industry — promoters, booking agents and event planners — directly involved in site selection. Voting is based on convenience of location, attractiveness and maintenance of the facility, professionalism of staff, cuisine, and technological capabilities.

SMG markets and manages the Hawaii Convention Center under the direction of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, the state’s tourism agency.

“We are extremely pleased with our continuous success and share our excitement with our 26 sister facilities of the SMG ohana,” said Joe Davis, SMG general manager for the Hawaii Convention Center, in a prepared statement. “This award not only recognizes the facility but highlights Hawaii as a great destination for meetings and the hard work of our staff and destination partners.”

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Bank of America Corp. is switching from Fidelity Investments to Hewitt Associates Inc. and Plateau Systems as the Charlotte-based bank’s human-resource service providers, beginning in 2011.

Charlotte-based BofA is currently under contract with Fidelity, which has most of its 2,400 North Carolina employees in the Raleigh-Durham area, for such services. The bank, which ranks No. 5 in Raleigh-Durham market share, says the move will bring cost and operational efficiencies while also providing market-leading technologies to BofA managers and employees.

Under the new agreements, Hewitt will offer human-resources administration, payroll services and health-management administration, as well as information technology. Plateau Systems will provide employee training across BofA’s departments.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Last year, Fidelity cut its investment in its large-client, human-resources administration and payroll-outsourcing business to focus on small and midsized markets. BofA says it evaluated options to continue with its contract with Fidelity but decided to request bids for a new human-resources provider.

Fidelity will continue to administer retirement services for BofA (NYSE:BAC).

Boston-based Fidelity is one of the world’s largest providers of financial services. It offers investment management, retirement planning, brokerage, and human resources and benefits outsourcing services.

Illinois-based Hewitt (NYSE:HEW) markets human-resources consulting and outsourcing services. The company has 23,000 workers in more than 30 countries. Last week, it announced plans to add 463 jobs in Charlotte during the next three years. Hewitt has 534 workers in North Carolina. The vast majority of them are in Charlotte.

The new jobs, primarily in HR and information technology, will be added to the company’s leased operations at University Research Park in north Charlotte.

Virginia-based Plateau Systems is a provider of work-force management technologies.

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