After two days of talks with Oracle, Hurd decided to join them as a board member, mainly overseeing acquisitions. It only took a few hours for HP to sue him, which is very logical, as Hurd must’ve signed an NDA with HP at one point or another, and in his current job, he will definitely use all the knowledge and expertise acquired in HP to serve his new employer, Oracle.

ORCL went up over 6% today on the news that Hurd is joining (Hurd is best known for tripling HP’s sales), and apparently it wasn’t affected by the lawsuit. It seems to me that Oracle is already prepared for such move by HP, and they probably have the legal response already canned.

Oracle is currently trading at $24.38, HPQ is currently trading at 39.95, down 1%.

Oracle is 31% larger than HP in market capitalization. This, is what I call, the clash of the titans.