Computer giant Hewlett Packard has called in the Serious Fraud Office after taking huge losses on a $10.3 billion (£6.5 billion) deal to buy UK software firm and Tottenham Hotspur sponsor Autonomy, accusing the company’s managers of “serious accounting improprieties”.
HP has written off a huge $8.8 billion (£5.5 billion) on last year's deal, which made a fortune for Autonomy’s founder Mike Lynch. The US firm said today there appeared to be a “willful effort on behalf of certain former Autonomy employees” to inflate the value of the company “to mislead investors and potential buyers”.
More than $5 billion of the losses is linked to “serious accounting improprieties, misrepresentation and disclosure failures” discovered by the firm after an internal investigation, launched after a senior member of Autonomy’s leadership team came forward with allegations.
HP has called in the SFO and US regulators to pursue a civil and criminal investigation and “intends to aggressively pursue this matter in the months to come”. The write downs pushed the US firm to losses of $12.7 billion for the year to October 31.
