HP Autonomy Accounting Scandal

Attorneys would like to hear from Hewlett-Packard (HP) shareholders in light of news regarding a recent $8.8 million accounting scandal. In late Nov., HP announced an $8.8 billion write-down of the value of Autonomy, a British software firm it acquired last year. HP has accused the company of misrepresenting its financial performance, and has positioned itself as a victim of the alleged fraud. It is believed that HP’s announcement, however, could prompt shareholder litigation questioning whether it properly looked into Autonomy before purchasing the company.

HP Releases Statement on Autonomy

HP conducted an internal investigation of Autonomy’s accounting practices and found that the company was “substantially overvalued” at the time of the deal due to misleading statements about its revenue, growth rate and other financial standings. Specifically, HP reported that the British software company mischaracterized its revenue with sales not linked to software content and utilized licensing deals with some product resellers to purport exaggerated or absent revenue.

HP has released a statement regarding the write-down, saying that it is “extremely disappointed to find that some former members of Autonomy's management team used accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company, prior to Autonomy's acquisition by HP.” The company continued by claiming that these efforts appeared to be “a willful effort to mislead investors and potential buyers and severely impacted HP management's ability to fairly value Autonomy at the time of the deal.”

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It is suspected that HP may not have properly researched Autonomy before acquiring it last year. Attorneys are investigating whether shareholders have legal recourse as a result of this announcement.

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