HPE seeks $4B in damages from Autonomy boss Mike Lynch and his ex-CFO Lawyers for HPE are seeking $4 billion (£3.17 billion) in damages from former Autonomy boss Mike Lynch and his ex-CFO Sushovan Hussain, after a court in the UK found the pair inflated the software maker's value ahead of its merger with HP. HPE successfully sued Autonomy's founder Mike Lynch in the High Court of England and …
Léo Apotheker, HP’s CEO during the period of the merger, is quoted in the document as saying that he would have sought an explanation from Autonomy’s leadership if he had discovered the discrepancies in its books.
That useless bastard hasn't got an ounce of sense in his entire body - everyone else in the entire industry was saying, "How much?" for the valuation of Autonomy, but he still carried on with the purchase anyway when it was obvious they were paying way, way, too much.
And don't get me started on the whole Palm purchase and subsequent Touchpad shitshow. If anyone should be in jail it should be everyone from Carly Fiorini onwards for what they did to HP.
Are auditors like KPMG not complicit, and even prime instrumental, in the perpetuation of an extensive fraud over any number of fiscal quarters whenever their supposed unbiased reports on the health of a client endorse the picture/figures/wealth presented to them by the client?
It is surely not the case that they be completely blameless and able to escape any liability for the success of any fraud and their misreporting of extremely attractive earnings. Such is bound to encourage similar shenanigans if that be the case?
I suppose they have organised some sort of stay out of jail free card allowing then to claim immunity from prosecution by virtue of the fact that a simple third party promise that is expected to present them with the truth of any quarter was not honoured and they cooked the books for the client unknowingly. How very convenient is that dodge for a speeding bullet.
Who's making all the money now out of anything/everything that has followed on from the Autonomy sale, and laughing all the way to the bank?
Are auditors like KPMG not complicit, and even prime instrumental ...
... surely not the case that they be completely blameless ...
Who's making all the money now ...
+1
These are just the basic questions that absolutely everyone involved has ignored.
Like some other commentard posted some time ago:
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"But there are things no one asked or is asking about:
Are all those involved on the HP side of this absurd fiasco really stupid DHs?
The list is quite long and I won't type it again but they are all bigshot CxOs, lawyers, bankers and accountants.
The accountants got off with a slap on their ink stained shirt cuffs and the rest are all still working as if nothing had happened.
And Mike Lynch ...
What is the guy, the Pied Piper of Idiotic Acquisitions? A master hipnotist? 8^D
I read somewhere (cannot recall where/when) that a small group of HP shareholders filed a suit and were happy to shut their trap for what ended up being small change.
Small change because they were probably few and small shareholders which were offered 2X their holdings to desist and go home.
But the value of their holdings can only account for a very small drop of crap in the shitload of cash that was sent down the toilet via the absurd 80% writedown.
For a long time I thought that HP had been in the hands of idiots but as time went by and the more I thought of it, the more it started to make less and less sense.
How can it be that in a country (like the US) where you can practically sue a dog for barking at you, this did not bring about the fall of HP and multi-million class action lawsuits everywhere?
It is often said that to find the cuprits you have to follow the money or the broad ...
Right.
Let's follow the money:
Who did all the cash blown away actually belong to?
ie: who were the parties that apparently lost the most money in this charade?
And while we're here ...
Just where is all the moohlah?
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.
Are auditors like KPMG not complicit
Autonomy's auditors were tried and convicted.
In the acquisition, HPE executives refused to read KPMG's preliminary report, and Apotheker fired them before they could complete their final report. I don't see how they can be blamed for that.
Léo Apotheker stated: “If, as seems most likely, the explanation I heard was not satisfactory, I have no doubt that I would have recommended to HP’s Board that it should abandon the deal”.
I followed the UK trial and thought the judge got it wrong.
At best HP showed fraud to the tune of less than $10M. They actually never attempted to show the massive fraud they publicly claimed just a small amount of revenue misclassified.
The amount they showed may have been fraudulent but materially would not affect a $11B deal. So on finding for HP the judge should have at least stated that.
One has to remember that HP paid $11B for an asset that was been shopped to others for $4B that others did not touch because they thought that $4B was way over Autonomy value. The trial further showed that except for the CEO the internal staff opposed the deal on valuation and that HP did not listen to their auditors or went ahead with the deal before the audit was completed.
It is also funny that the UK judge ruled the accounting treatments as fraud when the regulatory body ruled otherwise.
Did Lynch and Co participate in a fraud. Likely, possible maybe yes. Did it rise to a level that justify HP paying $11B for a company nobody thought was valued even 4$B, no they did not at least not based on HP own numbers on the level of Fraud they are accusing Lynch of.
I am getting a little fuzzy on this but I cant see any other rational conclusion based on the facts from the UK trial.
Every now and then when this case turns up in the news I like to quote this bit from one of the claim/counter-claim documents in this Autonomy vs. HP spat which seems 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 there is no information as to which country music songs were played.
....to compensate for the lost (or returned as not fit for purpose) printer sales they must be experiencing, due to their printer software being ABSOLUTE CRAP.
As someone who volunteers at a help drop-in, we see multiple problems with HP printers. If it can't be fixed (the usual case) I recommend dumping it and buying ANYTHING BUT HP.
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