Hewlett-Packard, the largest technology company in the world, who operates in almost every country, gave its chairman and chief executive Mark Hurd a whopping $42.5 million as compensation package for 2008, including bonuses from previous years for tripling the company's profit by adding more than $30 billion in sales in his three year stint with HP.

Taking over the reins of HP in April 2005 from Carly Fiorina who was forced to resign by HP's board of directors after disappointing earnings and the difficult merger with Compaq, Hurd, the previous head at NCR Corporation turned the tides at HP by increasing its revenues to $91.7 billion thereby reestablishing the company as the largest worldwide seller of personal computers, surpassing rival Dell.

CEO Mark Hurd was made the chairman of Hewlett-Packard in September 2006, immediately after the sacking of Patricia Dunn, the previous board chairperson, thereby ending chaos created by the spy scandal at Silicon Valley''s largest company and the world''s second-largest personal- computer maker. (See: Mark Hurd takes over at HP as Patricia Dunn quits)

According to a regulatory filing made yesterday, the compensation figures reveal that Hurd received $1.5 million in salary, a bonus of $5.3 million, $18.6 million in non-stock incentive plan compensation, awarded $12.9 million in stock and a $4.2 million in option awards, pension payments and expenses.

Hurd had exercised options for 400,000 shares last year, which he sold, making $10 million in the process. The 336,666 restricted shares, which were worth $15.7 million last year, can now be sold off if he so desires.

The filing by HP shows the 2008 compensation in two different ways as the total ends up differently, depending on the way it is calculated as according to the compensation committee, Hurd was paid $23.3 million during fiscal 2008 while the company filed the compensation package amounts to $42.5 million, which includes incentive payments earned from previous years, but paid in 2008.

The biggest part of Hurd's compensation package comes from cash incentives based on the 2008 fiscal year HP's performance, which saw the Palo Alto-based company's profit rise 15 per cent to $8.3 billion, while sales climbed 13 per cent to $118.4 billion.

Hurd, was able to engineer the remarkable turnaround by aggressively cutting costs as it announced cutting 24,600 jobs over three years as it integrated enterprise technology firm Electronic Data Systems Corp, which it acquired for $13.9 billion in August, to emerge as IBM's strongest challenger. (See: HP completes $13.9 billion acquisition of EDS)

While IBM still leads the tech services industry, HP, the world's largest PC maker is in second place. Last year HP and EDS had combined revenue of $38.8 billion in services whereas IBM had $51.4 billion revenue in total technology and business-services in 2007.

Under Hurd's leadership, HP had one of the technology industry's broadest portfolios of products, services and end-to-end solutions and combined offerings will focus on helping clients accelerate growth, mitigate risks and lower costs. (See: HP snaps at IBM's heels with EDS merger)