HP CEO denies 'bullet dodging' with stock sale

Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd says he did nothing wrong when he sold HP stock shares before news of the tech giant's pretexting scandal went public.

In a December 21 letter to Congress just made public on a congressional Web site (click for PDF of the letter), Hurd said the sale was prearranged and part of an ongoing investment strategy. He wrote that the sale of 100,000 shares on August 25 represented only 5 percent of his HP holdings and noted that Wall Street had yet to punish the company's stock over the spying scandal.

"HP's stock has risen by more than $5 per share since the date of the trade," Hurd wrote in the letter. "My August trade was not a case of bullet-dodging."

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