All those readers who are following the HP/Autonomy debacle should read the excellent analysis – HP and Autonomy– in today’s Financial Times. The ‘event’ that triggered the article was the filing of a case against HP and its advisers by a group of HP shareholders.
The concluding paragraph of this full page analysis ends “Where does this leave HP? If the UK Serious Fraud Office, or the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice, find substance in the accusations, HP will hardly look good. But if the accusations are refuted, it should spell the end of Ms Whitman and raise the prospect of expensive settlements with aggrieved shareholders. It is, ironically, the possibility that no crimes were committed against HP that its investors should fear the most.”
The stakes for all parties could not be higher. Whitman and HP have to prove conclusively that wrong doing (not just over paying) was the root of the problem. That is the only way they can ‘win’. But even then, as the FT says, HP will‘hardly look good’ for not having spotted the problems sooner – preferably before doing the deal!
Conversely, Mike Lynch, ex- Autonomy management and advisers do not have to prove they are ‘innocent’. If the case is ‘unproven’, Whitman and HP will have ‘lost’. Indeed, in that circumstance I can see Lynch adding to their ‘discomfort’ with a law case of his own against them for defamation or whatever.
The concern is that the situation could go on for a long time. And that surely is to nobody’s benefit.