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Serious Fraud Office Drop Investigation Into Autonomy Accounting

Posted by Soulskill on from the government-agencies-with-funny-names dept.

mrspoonsi sends up an update on the investigation into Autonomy, a software company acquired by HP in 2011. HP paid a staggering $11.7 billion in the deal, then later wrote off $8.8 billion and claimed Autonomy's management intentionally defrauded them. The UK Serious Fraud Office opened a case on the matter in 2013, but that investigation has now been dropped. According to the Office's press release, they felt there was "insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction," given the information they had to work with. Autonomy is not off the hook, however — the case has now been entirely ceded to U.S. authorities.

2 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. HP Paid silly money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    HP paid silly money, all the details of Autonomy's accounting numbers were right there in the books, anyone who read the books said "you're stupid to pay that much", Oracle said as much publicly after they turned it down, saying it was way overpriced.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/electronics/8796470/Oracle-and-Autonomy-row-escalates-as-Larry-Ellison-accuses-Mike-Lynch-of-lying.html

    "Mr Ellison claimed in an earnings call last week that Autonomy had been "shopped" to Oracle before the British software company agreed its controversial $11.7bn (£7.1bn) sale to Hewlett Packard"

    ""After listening to Mr Lynch’s PowerPoint slide sales pitch to sell Autonomy to Oracle, Mr Kehring and Mr Hurd told Mr Lynch that with a current market value of $6 billion, Autonomy was already extremely over-priced."

    The price HP paid NEARLY DOUBLE, the price that Oracle refused to pay as overpriced.

    The valuation was insane, based on FUTURE growth not present value, and growth is illusive, based on OPINION not fact, because nobody can see into the future. So you believed managements OPINION as to future growth and didn't estimate your own numbers, HP.

    Now they try to get a prosecution because management willfully misled you? They painted too rosy a future? F*off. You're just incompetent. Oracle correct said it was overpriced, and you didn't, and paid nearly double the price Oracle said was too much.

  2. Re:confusing headline. by _merlin · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think you might be inebriated: it's malted barley and hops. In fact, I'm pretty sure you can't malt hops.