Ms Fiorina gave a passionate defence of the proposed merger

The chief executive addressed 250 analysts at a six-hour meeting in New York on Wednesday - three weeks before a shareholder vote on 19 March.

Ms Fiorina, chief executive, told the meeting that the technology industry was consolidating and that only bigger companies could serve customers' every need.

"In a consolidating industry, do we ensure that our enterprise computing business has scale to truly be a platform of choice, or do we allow it to be subscale and slowly wither?" she asked.

Merger charges

For the first time, the cost of the merger was also revealed.

Chief financial officer Bob Wayman said the company would take merger charges of up to $1.4bn if the $21bn deal went ahead.

It's not a clear case yet to the investment community on who could win

Ari Topper Analyst

He added, however, that Hewlett-Packard would still beat Wall Street predictions for 2003 regardless.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), which provides advice to many institutional investors, plans to publish its opinion of the deal early next week.

Analysts gave the deal a 50% chance of succeeding and said that the ISS report would be crucial.

"It's not a clear case yet to the investment community on who could win," said Ari Topper, an analyst with Merger Insight. "It could go either way."

Opposition

Members of the Hewlett-Packard families, including dissenting board member Walter Hewlett, are opposing the deal.

He argues that it would create a bloated PC business and dilute Hewlett-Packard's printing business.

Ms Fiorina also took the opportunity at the meeting to deny that she would take a substantial pay packet if the merger succeeded.

Mr Hewlett said recently that the company had initially considered a $70m, two-year package for Ms Fiorina, in the event of a merger.

Analysts at the meeting were also played a video with testimonials from Hewlett-Packard customers backing a merger.

Ms Fiorina said Mr Hewlett and David W. Packard, another heir, were misleading investors.