Corporate Battles - Did You Pay Too Much?

The current Hewlett Packard/ Autonomy controversy seems to be hotting up with the creation by Autonomy’s former boss, Mike Lynch, of a web-site to counter Hewlett Packard’s widely reported claims that deceptive accounting artificially inflated Autonomy’s price prior to its acquisition by HP. Lynch says that HP’s financial team could not have missed such issues in the due diligence they carried out before the sale went through. This has led to allegations that HP is putting up a ‘smokescreen’ to draw attention away from its poor performance generally.

What intrigues me most about this on-going battle is Lynch’s claim that HP made their public announcements before contacting him about the issue. This makes it look like HP’s first priority was to manage their PR problem before even starting the usual pre-litigation posturing; although HP are now saying they believe the legal process is the correct method in which to bring out the facts and take action on behalf of their shareholders.

This real-life story has some resonances with what happens in my book, Wounded Mountain, as one theme in the book examines the ethics around a fictional company acquisition from the point of view of the professional advisers on the deal, the lawyers and accountants.

You can find Wounded Mountain on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wounded-Mountain-ebook/dp/B00A8GRXVA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355048495&sr=8-1

The Telegraph article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9721708/Autonomy-founder-Mike-Lynch-creates-website-to-battle-HP-claims.html

Mike Lynch web-site at: http://autonomyaccounts.org/