HP to Hewlett: My ad's bigger than yours
The ad war between Hewlett-Packard and shareholder Walter Hewlett is heating up in major metropolitan newspapers. A Hewlett adviser expects the ad battle to get worse.
Walter Hewlett, who opposes HP's proposed merger with Compaq Computer, took out a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, in a move to outline the reasons he's against the deal.
Not to be outdone by Hewlett, HP launched its own ad, a two-page spread in the Journal. HP's ad, which appeared in the paper's Money & Investing section, appeared on the second and third pages of the section. Hewlett's appeared on page 15.
Hewlett's ad will also appear Friday in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News, he said in a statement. HP wasn't immediately available to detail its ad plans.
The ad war is just one more development in a series of tit-for-tat moves leading up to the March 19 vote on the HP-Compaq merger. Hewlett and HP have been dueling in polls and proxy statements. Hewlett and HP executives have also been making the rounds with institutional shareholders and Wall Street analysts to tout or torpedo the deal.