Joe Nocera is a regular columnist at the New York Times On October 8, 2010, he published this article about Hewlett Packard and enterprise software maker SAP:
A Double Standard at H.P.
And so it came to pass that on the 55th day - 55 days, that is, after firing its chief executive, Mark V. Hurd, for playing footsie with a consultant and fudging his expense accounts - the board of directors at Hewlett-Packard proudly announced it had found a new man to lead the company out of the wilderness.
His name is Leo Apotheker, a suave European - how many American C.E.O.'s have an accent aigu in their name? - who had spent most of his career at SAP, the giant German maker of business software. SAP has one primary competitor: Oracle, the very same company that hired Mr. Hurd barely a month after H.P. let him go, in a move clearly intended not only to bolster Oracle but to humiliate H.P.
The post goes on to excoriate HP and SAP and praise Oracle. The New York Times editor added this footnote on October 12, 2010:
Editors' Note: October 12, 2010
In the Talking Business column in Business Day on Saturday, Joe Nocera wrote about a lawsuit by Oracle against a division of SAP, claiming theft of intellectual property. Mr. Nocera learned after the column was published that Oracle was represented by the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, where his fiance works as director of communications. To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Mr. Nocera would not have written about the case if he had known of the law firm's involvement.
Others have picked up on this story -- from Digital Daily:
HP Scandal Sucks in New York Times Columnist Over Conflict of Interest
Another reputation smeared in the Hewlett-Packard/Oracle slag-fest. Turns out Joe Nocera, the New York Times (NYT) business columnist who penned that scathing piece on former SAP chief and incoming Hewlett-Packard (HP) CEO Leo Apotheker for his involvement in a lawsuit over intellectual property theft between SAP (SAP) and Oracle (ORCL) - has a conflict of interest.
Nocera's fiancee, Dawn Schneider, is director of communications for Boies, Schiller & Flexner, the law firm that just so happens to represent Oracle in its very same suit against SAP.
Someone should have given this story a few moments of thought before hitting the send button...
