Ex-Autonomy CFO: HP Trying To Hide Truth 59
jfruh (300774) writes The fallout from HP's Autonomy acquisition keeps getting more dramatic. Autonomy's ex-CFO is trying to block the settlement of lawsuits that arsoe the botched deal, claiming that HP is trying to hide its "own destruction of Autonomy's success after the acquisition." HP hit back, saying the ex-CFO "was one of the chief architects of the massive fraud on HP that precipitated this litigation."
Re:Is the CEO really trying to argue.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Since this lawsuit is brought by HP, alleging that it has been defrauded, demonstrating that HP knew what they were buying when they bought it would seem to be a sound defense(if not necessarily a plausible one or one that they will succeed in demonstrating).
If it were the state coming after Autonomy for violations of accounting regulations this argument would be of absolutely no defensive value; but that isn't this case (and the penalties for just breaking the law are probably way lower than for defrauding shareholders large enough to sue you...)
HP, wildly incompetent (Score:5, Interesting)
HP is wildly incompetent. They ruin every business they buy. Look at their "we're dropping VMS" and a while later "Oh no, we're going to port it to amd64" flagellations as they continue to ruin what's left of DEC and Compaq.
We used to use software produced by Autonomy (actually, a company that Autonomy had earlier bought). As soon as HP took over, the customer service went to shit and we've since dropped the product because they had basically no flexibility when it came to changing demand and licensing. Previously, Autonomy would have been willing to work with us and allow us to change our licensing levels as demand for the service we were using this software for changed.
Re:Is the CEO really trying to argue.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I left autonomy a bit before the HP acquisition (and was part of a different company that had previously been acquired by autonomy). Everybody there knew that autonomy handled their books oddly (ie booking all revenue from a deal before the services were delivered). It was explained to us that it was because autonomy was UK based and therefore were not subject to quite the same rules. If HP was not aware of the issues (which I don't believe), then it is still their fault because they obviously did not talk to many people within the company.