When Hilton Hotels Corporation (HHC) announced the hiring of two executives from the Starwood group last summer, Chris Nassetta, Hilton's chief executive, trumpeted their “best-in-class” credentials in the lifestyle hotel sector. After years of watching Starwood lead the field with its trendy W brand, Hilton would at last be able to develop a cutting-edge name of its own. But less than six weeks after Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani unveiled Hilton's Denizen brand in a blaze of publicity, Mr Nassetta may be rueing the appointments after being dragged into what Starwood claims is “the clearest imaginable case of corporate espionage, theft of trade secrets, unfair competition and computer fraud”. In a 91-page writ, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Starwood claims that Mr Klein and Mr Lalvani, who had previously been responsible for its W brand, “stole massive amounts of proprietary and highly confidential Starwood information”. It alleges that this information “was used to expedite Hilton's entry into the lifestyle hotel market, reposition its luxury brands and substantially reduce its costs and risks of doing so”. The suit claims that Mr Klein and Mr Lalvani “directly and through other Starwood luxury brand employees they recruited to Hilton, stole more than 100,000 electronic files before and after they joined Hilton”. It adds that confidential information on the W brand was used in the development of the Denizen brand. Even the choice of the name had “a familar ring”, it claimed, as one of the stolen files contained references to a W Hotel concept called “zen den”. The company adds: “The sheer volume of theft is extraordinary, and may be unprecedented.” Hilton said: “Hilton Hotels Corporation believes this lawsuit is without merit and will vigorously defend itself. We fully intend to move forward on the development of our newest brand, Denizen Hotels.” ，英语论文网站，英语论文题目 |
