Hewlett Packard wins billion-dollar fraud case in UK

[superadmin]

LONDON – US tech giant Hewlett Packard (HP) won its multibillion-dollar fraud case yesterday over its 2011 purchase of British software company Autonomy.

A year after the deal, HP accused Autonomy of fudging its accounts, claiming it had inflated its value and caused huge losses for the US company when the true situation emerged after the US$11.1-billion (RM46.5-billion) sale.

HP sued two executives, Mike Lynch, Autonomy’s British founder, and former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain, for around US$5 billion.

In a summary of his decision in what is believed to be Britain’s biggest-ever civil fraud trial, judge Robert Hildyard said HP and the other claimants had “substantially won”.

Hildyard said the damages to be paid will be determined at a later date.

HP claimed the two men had “artificially inflated Autonomy’s reported revenues, revenue growth and gross margins... over a sustained period of time.”

The company announced an US$8.8-billion write-down of the firm’s value just over a year after the sale.

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