Of course there is caveat emptor and HPis a sophisticated business entity with the means to understand what they were buying so there is no fraud.
HPE as it is known now, it was just HP when I worked as a contractor for them and as an employee for a short time, has been a poorly run company since the days of Carly Fiorino.
For example, they had a policy one time that everyone had a mandatory 2-week vacation at the end of the year, if you had PTO available you could take it and still get paid, otherwise your pay was affected.
I had a friend start with them late in the year sometime around October/November, he wasn’t there long enough to build up PTO.
So, when the mandatory vacation came around, he lost pay and went into the new year with a negative amount of PTO for the coming year.
HP had numerous scandals from the time they ran off the family of the original founders, one CEO Mark Hurd who is now CEO of Oracle hired a woman named Jodie Fisher who was alleged to be an “Adult” movie actress, her job was to be at parties when CEOs of other companies were present and flirt with them.
Hurd was fired for sexual harassment of Jodie Fisher and filing false expense reports.
Once HP went from a company that made great products designed and built by Engineers to a company managed for increasing stock prices they went into the crapper.
Much like what Boeing is going thru now without all the publicity.