Morgenfeld was intimately involved in Silver Lake’s $24.4 billion buyout offer for Dell Inc. (DELL), whose chief rival just happens to be HP. That means he was around for due diligence, negotiations and strategic planning. Even if Silver Lake cut off his email and locked his office door, Morgenfeld still would have all that information floating around in his head.

I’d have to think his Silver Lake colleagues and Michael Dell were shocked to hear the news, and that his departure was heavily lawyered. Morgenfeld had been with Silver Lake since 2004, after having worked as a tech investment banker at Goldman Sachs (GS).

He already has been removed from the Silver Lake website, but an HP spokesman (who I may have woken up) said he wasn’t yet in the HP directory.

Also worth noting that Morgenfeld is not the first Silver Lake exec to join HP. George Kadifa spent five years as a Silver Lake operating partner before joining HP to run its software unit last May. That departure came prior to Silver Lake and Michael Dell beginning discussions, which first occurred last July at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference.

Update: HP confirmed late Thursday night that Morgenfeld is joining as a senior VP to “help drive a pan-HP mobility strategy.”

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