A Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary born technology entrepreneur, Mr Mike Lynch, stands accused of artificially inflating revenues at his UK software company ‘Autonomy’, before selling it on to the American multinational information technology company Hewlett Packard (HP) for a reported $11bn (€9.7bn); the California head-quartered firm’s lawyer has informed a London court.
HP is suing the companies founder Mr Mike Lynch and his finance director Mr Sushovan Hussain for over $5bn in damages, over their management of Autonomy, founded in the early 1990’s on the back of his University of Cambridge doctoral thesis.
Mr Lynch, who in 2006 was named a non-executive director of the BBC and awarded an OBE, strongly denies any wrongdoing, and stated that the contents of HP’s claim were “a simple rehash of previous leaks and insinuations that add up to one long disagreement over accounting treatment”.
In 2008 the technology used by Autonomy played a key role in tracking down the rogue Société Générale trader Jérôme Kerviel, latter a French trader who was convicted and imprisoned for the 2008 Société Générale trading loss, for breach of trust, forgery and unauthorized use of the bank’s computers, resulting in losses valued at €4.9 billion. Kerviel’s trial began on June 8th 2010 and on October 5th 2010, he was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison, with the last two years suspended.
HP have since written down the value of Autonomy by some $8.8bn, stating that serious accounting improprieties had been uncovered since their purchase. HP believed it had acquired a rapidly growing software company gaining market share, but it has since discovered that the contrary was the true case. HP now believe it overpaid the English based software group by some $5bn (£3.2bn).
London’s High Court case continues.
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