Autonomy trial: Key HPE witness might not testify, UK High Court told Ill-fated British software company Autonomy's one-time US sales chief is reluctant to testify in person against former CEO Mike Lynch, the High Court in London heard yesterday morning. HPE, which is suing Lynch in the UK over the $8.8bn writedown of Autonomy after buying the firm in 2012, wants to call Christopher Egan to give …
I don't *think* we are actually. This is a civil case, and the court fees (which should pay for the costs of running the court) will have been paid by the claimants. (If they win, they can claim those fees back from the defendants - but I think that will be chicken-feed compared to the lawyers fees.)
Are we? Surely if HP are suing, then they're paying court costs. Or Lynch will if he loses. I don't know if the fees cover the whole costs though. It's even possible we're making a profit. Though I doubt it would be enough to cover the costs of the serious fraud squad's time from their previous investigation.
Oddly enough we're actually a major an exporter of m'learned friends' services. Many contracts between Russian companies for example are done under London law, so they can access the UK courts system when there's a disagreement. Given that whoever's best connected to the governemt at the time will win in Russian courts. Plus there's lots of judges and ex-judges who moonlight as part of arbitration agreements.
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They were pretty incompetent
How can you be so sure? This endless repetition of the concept of incompetence even when multiple CEOs and a huge number of high level manager and experts had a role over a long period of time stinks. Is it really possible all of them were so incompetent? Isn't it possible that the reason might be something worse?
Look at most IT acquisitions and sweep away the forward looking BS.
The companies acquiring the company generally just want to take a product that they can sit on, screw existing customers and jack up prices.
HP thought they could do that with autonomy, but autonomy were already riding the screw the customer bus hard. HP was desperate for a big name acquisition to show they weren’t past it. HP thought they could fly through due diligence, pay top dollar and make the board look like they weren’t a ink company with a dying printer/PC/server market.
In an idle moment I read through some of the claim/counter-claim documents in this Autonomy vs. HP spat and this particular bit seemed to say quite a bit about the management of HP:
"Ms Whitman ... repeatedly adopted the management approach of ... playing country music to the meeting instructing the senior executives attending to take the meaning of the country music songs and apply them to their own management methods".
Regrettably, the document didn't say.
I don't know if Shania Twain and Taylor Swift count as "country" (but they are on the list of http://theboot.com/worst-country-songs/ ) I'd nominate "That Don't Impress Me Much" and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" as being somewhat appropriate to the situation...
From early in the article ...
1) HPE want to call Egan as a witness.
2) Lynch opposes this.
3) Yet Lynch's own lawyers "wanted to put it to Egan in person that his witness statement "is, in large part, false".
So why oppose him as a live witness, the best opportunity to achieve 3) is to have him appear as a witness, on oath, in the dock.
( aside from the issue of Egan not wanting to attend nor ability to make him do so).
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