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Mercury Interactive

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For another company with a similar name, see Mercury Computer Systems.

HP Mercury (formerly Mercury Interactive) is a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard that is a market leader in automated software quality assurance and offers products in other areas such as diagnostics, monitoring, and IT governance. Mercury was founded in 1989 and is based Mountain View, California. It holds its largest R&D facility in Yehud, Israel, and has many offices around the world. On July 25, 2006 Hewlett-Packard announced that it would pay $4.5 billion to acquire Mercury, offering to pay $52 a share which was a 33 percent premium over its close of $39 a share on the day of the announcement. Mercury became part of HP as of November 7th, 2006.

Corporate malfeasance

From 4 January, 2006, until its purchase by Hewlett-Packard, Mercury was been traded via Pink Sheets as a result of being delisted from the NASDAQ due to noncompliance with filing requirements[1]. This situation occurred as a result of Mercury having to restate financial results due to improprieties by executive management regarding stock options backdating. The executive officers who precipitated the delisting, Chief Executive Officer Amnon Landan, Chief Financial Officer Douglas Smith, and General Counsel Susan Skaer, resigned on November 2, 2005 when it became known that these officers were aware of, and participated in, the manipulation of stock options purchase dates on 49 occasions between 1995 and 2004. In addition to these manipulations, the Chief Executive Officer, Amnon Landan, misreported personal stock option exercise dates to increase his profit on transactions three times between 1998 and 2001. Other improprieties on Amnon Landan's part include a 1 million dollar personal loan in 1999, which was not authorized by the board of directors, and was not clearly disclosed in the company's filings with the SEC. The company is under new management.

Products

Corporate Culture

As one of the fastest growing independent enterprise software companies during a time of economic hardship for many other companies in Silicon Valley, Mercury was known for having an aggressive and competitive culture. Mercury hired the best and the brightest worldwide, particularly out of other enterprise companies that were being liquidated like Veritas and PeopleSoft. Mercury was oft criticized for its practices of hiring staff as contractors for 10 weeks before converting to full-time, and for cleaning out its lowest 10% performers every year. But these somewhat aggressive practices led to a very high performance and highly demanding culture that continued up to its acquisition by HP.

Competitors

Quality Assurance

IT Governance / ITIL / ITSM

Monitoring and Diagnostics

References

  1. ^ "TheStreet.Com". Retrieved January 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Text "Mercury Interactive Shares to Be Delisted" ignored (help); Text "Tech Stocks: Software" ignored (help)
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