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HP Will Pay $100 Million To Settle Autonomy-Related Lawsuit

Posted by timothy on from the pretty-soon-real-money dept.

itwbennett writes: Although it 'believes the action has no merit,' HP today announced it will pay $100 million in a settlement with PGGM Vermogensbeheer B.V., the lead plaintiff in the securities class action arising from the impairment charge taken by HP following its acquisition of Autonomy. This is just the latest episode in the fallout from HP's Autonomy acquisition.

48 comments

  1. Hmmm ... by gstoddart · · Score: 2

    Although it 'believes the action has no merit'

    Well then ... I assert that HP is acting as a proxy for alien spies, and using their market position to facilitate the takeover of planet Earth by producing ever-crappier consumer products, and ensuring their web pages are useless and mind-numbingly badly written with useless URLs.

    Give me my fucking $100 million dollars.

    Sorry, but if it has no merit, $100 million to make it go away is an awful lot of money.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Hmmm ... by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      $100 million is not a lot when you are talking about $11.7 billion screw up it's less that 1%.

    2. Re:Hmmm ... by zarr · · Score: 1

      $100 million can easily be more then $11.7 billion if it's from a different budget. In HP's case I guess they just had $100 million left on the screwup-budget that they just had to spend somehow. Big companies are so fscked up.

    3. Re:Hmmm ... by pete6677 · · Score: 1

      Yep. $100 million is a lot of money to spend if a case truly has no merit. It doesn't cost nearly that much to pay attorneys to litigate something to death. They paid up to avoid further damage.

  2. What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What bright Spark at HP thought buying Autonomy would be a good idea?

    Let me guess ... she's running for president of the United States. And we thought dubya was bad.

    1. Re:What bright spark by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      What bright Spark at HP thought buying Autonomy would be a good idea?

      Let me guess ... she's running for president of the United States. And we thought dubya was bad.

      Ah, but you have to ask yourself .. is incompetence at running a corporation and a history of shady dealing and breaking the law an asset or a liability in this case?

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:What bright spark by danceswithtrees · · Score: 4, Informative

      Umm... Lets see. Fiorina's term as CEO ended in 2005. Hurd was CEO from 2005 till mid 2010. Apothekar takes over in mid 2010 and a year later Autonomy is acquired.

      See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      I'm no fan of Fiorina but it's a stretch to lay this on Fiorina. The acquisition was probably started under Hurd but Apothekar had a year to do due diligence and back out.

    3. Re:What bright spark by lavaboy · · Score: 1

      nope. For all her faults - and there are many - this one is all about the true Master of Disaster at HP, the incredibly incompetent and massively overwhelmed Hasso Plattner, the one-trick-pony from SAP who sees everything as an accounting software house, and runs it accordingly. He could run anything that isn't SAP into the ground without breaking a sweat. Maybe he should take over Carly's campaign...

      There's this thing called Google, and it is full of little facts like this one... everyone should try it!

      --
      Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
    4. Re:What bright spark by plopez · · Score: 1

      Léo Apotheker and Mark Hurd, Meg Whitman got left holding the bag and is now doing damage control. I don't think Carly was involved but she did a great deal of damage as well.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    5. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hadn't heard that Meg Whitman had announced her candidacy. But then the deal closed about a month after she got put in the CEO seat, so a fair bit of the blame can probably be awarded to Léo Apotheker.

    6. Re:What bright spark by plopez · · Score: 1

      Go ask George W. Bush.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    7. Re:What bright spark by geekmux · · Score: 1

      What bright Spark at HP thought buying Autonomy would be a good idea?

      Let me guess ... she's running for president of the United States. And we thought dubya was bad.

      Ah, but you have to ask yourself .. is incompetence at running a corporation and a history of shady dealing and breaking the law an asset or a liability in this case?

      Exactly.

      Also, keep in mind, the last concern any POTUS has is actually worrying about budgets or spending. Any actions that spell otherwise are nothing but window dressing.

      In fact, one could easily use the words "balanced budget" as a litmus test for anyone running. Anyone believing that's even a relevant talking point anymore is a fucking moron, as is the candidate who would even dare to whisper it.

      And I'm willing to bet we'll hear more than a whisper. I simply fail to understand how anyone could still fall for that shit.

    8. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You give Leo Apothekar too little credit. He is the true Master of Disaster at HP. As a shareholder I want to see him in prison.

    9. Re:What bright spark by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      And Hilary Clinton.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    10. Re:What bright spark by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 0

      Yeah, what difference does it make?

      I mean, when you're "Spreading the wealth around"

      Who cares about our kids, and the debt they have to pay back ... or worse, pass on to their own kids. Why a nation going bankrupt (like Greece) should NEVER be a concern /sarcasm

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    11. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Voters have been falling for Tinkle Down Economics since 1980; what makes you think that will change?

    12. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We were right that Dubya was bad. It's just that the party has become so much more regressive since then that GWB now looks reasonable in comparison to the far-right-wing lunatics that drove everyone with a IQ above room temperature out of the party. "Conservative" is at the intersection of stupid and crazy, and these yahoos have taken over the Republican party.

    13. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But somehow, Barry has managed to screw it up even more.

    14. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "you know you are, but what am I"

    15. Re:What bright spark by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

      Not directly Fiorina's fault, but another disaster brought about the toxic culture she helped put into place.

    16. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not even close. Carly was long gone before HP considered buying Autonomy.

      I think the deal was closed under the spectacularly bad Leo Apotheker, but probably started under Mark Hurd.

    17. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Geekmux, please be quiet, the grown-ups are speaking. Presidents sign or veto spending bills, same as any other legislation.

    18. Re:What bright spark by tomhath · · Score: 1

      HP was already dysfunctional when she arrived.

      She was named CEO primarily because the board thought it would be nice to have a woman in that job. Of course, why wouldn't someone who majored in medieval history be perfect to lead a tech company?

    19. Re:What bright spark by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Hillary Clinton never ran a corporation.

      She got a cushy job as a lawyer because her husband was governor. Not one honest job sense.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    20. Re:What bright spark by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Her qualification was having run a Telco while all Telco's stock value was rising.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    21. Re:What bright spark by tomhath · · Score: 1

      She didn't "run a telco", although she did chair Lucent's consumer communications joint venture with Philips consumer communications - which failed.

      After that she led a sales and marketing group until HP hired her.

      .

    22. Re:What bright spark by erp_consultant · · Score: 1

      Hate to burst your bubble but that happened under Leo Apothekers leadership. Last time I checked he wasn't planning on running for President of the United States.

    23. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And she's going to be the next president. The election, at this point, is pretty much a formality.

      Shows you just how much of a shit pile GOP is become when they can't even come up with a candidate to beat her. Just the same clown cart act they put up last time.

      Honestly, nobody expects to see GOP in the big chair for the next 2-6 terms. Its that bad.

    24. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous+Psychopath · · Score: 1

      What bright Spark at HP thought buying Autonomy would be a good idea?

      Let me guess ... she's running for president of the United States. And we thought dubya was bad.

      Apotheker was the one that put together the Autonomy deal, although I think they pulled the ejection lever on him just prior to it being finalized.

      --

      Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

    25. Re:What bright spark by Xtifr · · Score: 1

      'Sfunny, I was just coming to post "at least this foul-up can't be blamed on that idiot that's currently running for President", and here I find that someone has already tried to blame that idiot! :)

    26. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not quite. Job count is increasing (although we need to work on the *quality* of those jobs). The deficit is down. The economy is recovering from the recession that began under GWB. We're slowly extricating ourselves from the middle east (though by no means fast enough). The POTUS isn't seen as a posturing buffoon and figurehead throughout the rest of the world, nor does he grope foreign leaders. The Patriot Act is starting to sunset and whether the current PTB like it or not, Americans are aware of NSA misconduct and willing to hold their elected officials accountable at the ballot box.

      Our current POTUS is far superior to GWB, and it's been reflected in his policies. His only failing has been an unwillingness to engage in serious conflict with a party that sees him as illegitimate for no reason beyond the color of his skin, and to try to re-enact things like glass-stegall, worker protections, and a sane regulatory infrastructure.

      But I suppose you'd see those efforts as bad, anyhow....

       

    27. Re:What bright spark by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Yeah gridlock!

      The GOP isn't much better. The best we can do is gridlock them against each other.

      The key moment is when the currency crisis hits. When that happens the federal government MUST BE GRIDLOCKED or we are all screwed.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    28. Re:What bright spark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You too can have an awesome economy while printing $600B to $1T a year! It's a new paradigm. It'll work forever.

      I personally want to extend a heartfelt thanks to the Europeans for blowing their Euro out their ass for the last five years, thus enabling our mad printing spree. You guys are awesome.

  3. Nope by tomhath · · Score: 1

    She had been gone for years before HP bought Autonomy.

  4. Might signal something good by ErichTheRed · · Score: 1

    Could this be a sign that the Fiorina/Hurd/Apoteker era is coming to an end for HP? Large companies often have near-death experiences before something gets too bad to ignore. IBM had this in the early 90s, and had to resort to major surgery to stay in the game. They're currently experiencing another one under Rometty, maybe the last, by which they're gutting everything out of the company and trying to become a white-shoe management consulting firm...with big data!

    I'm guessing HP is doing the same. They just hived off their PC/printer division, probably to sell it off to the highest bidder sometime soon. It remains to be seen whether the Enterprise division has anything good left to sell. Their servers are very good, and their non-consumer PCs/printers are still good. Software is awful, don't know about their network stuff, and that steaming mass of former EDS services guys probably won't help. :-)

    1. Re:Might signal something good by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      HP is dead.

      Long live Keysight!

      There is nothing left worth saving.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  5. Leave Hillary alone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is one example of incompetence and shady dealing she wasn't involved in. As far aw we know anyway.

  6. HP by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

    Is HP capable of doing anything these days without either making a complete hash of it, or landing in legal trouble?

    That's an inclusive 'or' - they appear to be quite capable of making a complete hash of something AND landing in legal trouble over it.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  7. Must have passed the legal dept. by Teun · · Score: 1

    This decision must have passed the legal department.
    And it seems they've advised the top brass this case has no merit and they'll happily fight it.
    For a cool $100 million + in legal fees :)

    So for once HP did the smart thing.

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  8. Can anybody tell me what Autonomy does/did? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

    None of the linked articles seem to say....

    1. Re:Can anybody tell me what Autonomy does/did? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Mostly they cooked books.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    2. Re:Can anybody tell me what Autonomy does/did? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They made a shitty search engine that supposedly worked by this magical tensor analysis. They said this search engine was really sophisticated because it was not driven by "keywords". They told stories of all sorts of vaporware applications, saying that the search engine could search for a certain part of a video or that you could search for "treating people badly" and it would find you all the dirt on Enron.

      The search engine powered the company intranet. It literally could not find any relevant document for anything.

    3. Re:Can anybody tell me what Autonomy does/did? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The company I work for tested Autonomy against quite a few other (million dollar) full-text engines, and it outperformed all of the others until Lucene/Elastic Search came around.

    4. Re:Can anybody tell me what Autonomy does/did? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Their primary product was enterprise search engine--which sucked shit. They started buying up companies to create integrated horseshit versions of their products, such that nothing ever worked right.

    5. Re:Can anybody tell me what Autonomy does/did? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did it outperform in search relevance? I won't argue that it wasn't fast.

  9. Someone aquiring HP by Etherwalk · · Score: 1

    This decision must have passed the legal department.

    And it seems they've advised the top brass this case has no merit and they'll happily fight it.

    For a cool $100 million + in legal fees :)

    So for once HP did the smart thing.

    Legal Department probably refused to say point blank that HP would definitely win (because only dumb legal departments do that), but said it would be somewhat expensive to fight. Probably less than $50M unless they are overpaying outside counsel.

    Decision was probably motivated by non-legal factors. $100M is a drop in the bucket compared to cost of negative publicity on stock valuation. $100M is also a very small amount to pay to resolve outstanding litigation in anticipation of due diligence on substantial acquisition (e.g. of HP) or merger.

  10. Horrible company by onmyouza · · Score: 1

    This company is really a joke. Instead of creating innovation or making products, year after year they're just making headlines for doing stupid things.

  11. Lala land by dhaen · · Score: 1

    So HP are paying out even though they state the case has "no merit". Are they hoping that the other "no merit" case (against former Autonomy owners) will bring fruit?