HP’s purchase of the software company Autonomy was one of the biggest takeover debacles in Silicon Valley. The former Autonomy boss has now been acquitted of fraud charges.
In the years-long dispute over allegations of fraud in a multi-billion dollar acquisition of the computer giant HP, a top British manager was surprisingly able to convince US jurors of his innocence. HP paid around eleven billion dollars for the software company Autonomy in 2011.
However, the computer company later wrote off billions and US prosecutors accused Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch and financial manager Stephen Keith Chamberlain of having cooked up the books. Last Wednesday, a jury in San Francisco acquitted both of them, as US media reported from the courtroom.
The decision was all the more surprising because Lynch was found guilty in a civil case in the UK in 2022. There, HPE, one of the two successor companies to the former Hewlett-Packard Group, is demanding four billion dollars from Lynch. The Autonomy purchase is considered one of the worst takeover debacles in Silicon Valley.
The 58-year-old himself had always denied all allegations and argued that HP wanted to make him a scapegoat for the botched takeover. US prosecutors in San Francisco in 2018 had accused him, among other things, of having personally profited from the deal to the tune of around $800 million. A former chief financial officer of Autonomy had previously been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to five years in prison.
Source: Stern
