Wednesday, 21 November 2012 16:26

HP counts losses because of Autonomy

Written by

Reading time is around minutes.
hp logo

Hewlett Packard in its fiscal fourth quarter financial report included the costs in the amount of 8.8 billion dollars due to serious accounting irregularities in its subsidiary Autonomy. With this HP admitted that they bought Autonomy based on dodgy data and false accounting reports in which the data was hidden. Overall, HP in its fourth quarter had a loss of 6.9 billion dollars, while revenues were $30 billion, which is 7% lower than a year before. Throughout fiscal 2012 HP has reported a loss of $12.7 billion on revenue of $ 120.4 billion.

HP acquired Autonomy in October last year through a deal worth 11.1 billion dollars. Taking over Autonomy was initially the plan of former CEO Leo Apotheker, but after his departure the new HP CEO, Meg Whitman has decided to finish the deal. Irregularities relating to Autonomy were discovered after an internal investigation prompted by monitoring one leaders of Autonomy. Based on this information, HP has launched an intensive internal investigation, which included independent foreign experts to fully analyze the results of the operations of Autonomy and related financial statements. HP contacted the appropriate authorities in the U.S. and UK to initiate investigations related to possible illegal activity.

After these accusations the former CEO of HP, Leo Apotheker, decided to make a statement and said that he is stunned and disappointed by this information on the alleged irregularities in Autonomy's financial statements. He stressed that the process of examining the internal financial condition of the company was thorough and included two highly respected independent companies engaged in the analysis of state companies. Former spokesman of Autonomy's CEO Mike Lynch noted that the former leadership of Autonomy is shocked by this report, and fully rejects all accusations as false.

[Ed – Although it is highly possible that HP got taken in there is probably quite a bit more on this story that will leak out. We are pretty sure that there was some dirty dealing on both sides, but that it is just now getting out to the rest of the world. HP needs to show this as fraud on Autonomy’s part so they can write off at least a portion of the loss…]

What do you think about this new information? Tell us in our Forum

Read 2956 times Last modified on Wednesday, 21 November 2012 16:32

Leave a comment

Make sure you enter all the required information, indicated by an asterisk (*). HTML code is not allowed.