Hewlett-Packard will walk away from the planned takeover of Price-Waterhouse-Cooper's consultancy business, unless the price is reduced, CEO Carly Fiorina said yesterday.

Initially, the two sides had agreed a price in the $17-18 billion range. But HP's share price has fallen since then, in common with other IT hardware and services stocks. Analysts reckon it now wants to pay $15 billion tops. ®