Laphen avoided prosecution by a quick retirement leaving SEC to fine CSC a massive amount for misrepresentation on the SEC filings and a lesson for the industry to learn a lesson on how it is not a good idea to hide losses from the SEC.
Lawrie (another 'L') told shareholders in both a report and a 2018 meeting that they would see growth and dividends that were bigger than a big thing. He then thanked them for attending before promptly and severely cutting staff in both Sales and Delivery. This directly had an impact on both DXC sales and revenue following his actions taken 'without reasonable cause'. Understandably, the shareholders were not too happy. Would you be if your local bank managed promised your money will be safe in the local bank with untold dividends if you invest even more, then went around setting fire to the place?
As if adding salt to the wounds, Lawrie then riffed the US lead and the shares took a massive tumble. It was as if wreckless behaviour was there to show who was in charge rather than to benefit the company, staff (like they ever mattered) and shareholders.
2019 and the share price is below $50 and continuing to decline. The dead-cat bounce isn't there either. I think it really is dead this time.
I half expect Mike to buy up a load of shares to make the residual once seem worth more. But once the cat is dead, what can you do?
Fast forward ahead.
I think in the future, you won't need to go to DXC and pay expensive amounts of money. You'll be able to sit down at your PC and visit amazon and provision your own infrastructure and platform as a service, scale up as much elastic storage as your business desires, add your endpoint security and detection as you need, install as many VDI's as you need, SQL Databses and select all your supply chain, ERP HR and payroll packages and even your own websites and branding all configured. Then go to checkout and...oh wait.
You might get a retro podcast offer:
Mike Lawrie reading his autobiography "The rise and fall of DXC and my part in its downfall" and "Was it just a load of Bionix?" M Lawrie.