Fraud
HPE claimed Autonomy was worth $11bn based on synergies with its existing business. Neither Autonomy or the market was required to prove these synergies existed and this immediately reduces the actual value of Autonomy from what HPE paid to the market value (i.e. ~US7bn) as this is HPE's failure to deliver projected benefits from the acquisition and not fraud. Meg and the rest of the board didn't like this approach and hence went digging for "accounting irregulaties" to cover this up.
HPE haven't gone after the accountants because the audited accounts are either significantly accurate (i.e. Deloitte audited accounts upto 2010) AND the fraud appears to have occured in the US between the time the 2010 accounts were completed and the acquisition in 2011. I note that a Deloitte partner was reported to be "too close" to Autonomy's board and failed to provide adequate oversight, but I can't find any fines/etc that resulted from this against the partner or Deloitte - the partner in question was also only present from late-2010 onwards.
HPE's star witness is Egan, the former Autonomy head of sales. Conveniently, all of the fraud HP allege appears to have occurred under Egan and Egan is testifying for HPE. HPE's evidence that Lynch was aware of the US deals in question appears to be based on a small number of e-mails sent from Egan to Lynch and Hussain. I am not disputing this evidence, but it appears to point to Egan being the fraudster rather than Lynch - Deloitte, Lynch and Hussain would be responsible if there were audited 2011 accounts but there weren't and Hussain has been convicted of wire fraud for sending e-mails with Autonomy's accounting numbers to HPE which is dubious at best. HPE's decision to not get KPMG to complete due diligence at this point also suggests some culpability for any lack of knowledge of fraud on HPE's part
In Lynch's defence, the 2011 numbers were affected by two large acquisitions that were still being integrated according to the limited information produced by KPMG. While this doesn't absolve him or Hussain of guilt, it does make presenting a "fair and accurate picture" more difficult. The mitigation is that HPE should have realised this and been more cautious - instead they rushed into the acquisition.
Post-acquistion, HPE had no real plans for how to integrate Autonomy and sales appear to have been lost because of this - which HPE have then added to the claims of fraud. Win-win...
I believe HP have completely failed to show the scale of the fraud matches their claims. In addition, HPE's witnesses have demonstrated that they largely ignored their internal advice (i.e. the CFO advising Leo not to proceed without due diligence) and relied on painting their own failings as the fault of others to drive this prosecution. While anything can happen (I'm relying on my understanding of ElReg's and others coverage), Lynch appears to be the victim in-spite of my doubts about the viability of Autonomy's business prior to the acquisition.
As for HP/HPE - we are left wondering if someone more competent than Hurd had run the company between 2005 and 2010 whether they would have had more of a future. Leo appears to have been a few SAP's short of an ERP while Whitman would have been more suited to a Disney step mother role. In the intervening ~15 years, HP has become a shadow of its former self and if DXC continues to struggle and HP Inc is taken over by Xerox, will shareholders even be able to sue the remnants? Maybe HPE have done enough to shield execs from what they feared the most?