Irish born tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch said yesterday he would file a claim against Hewlett-Packard for $150m (€134m) in damages over allegations the USA company made about his role in the acquisition of his software company Autonomy in 2011.
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But HP eventually wrote off three-quarters of the company’s value, and accused Mr Lynch and finance head Sushovan Hussain of mismanagement.
In addition, Lynch indicated he planned to sue HP for “loss and damage caused by false and negligent statements” for as much as $150 million, which he subsequently followed through on today.
HP’s $11 billion purchase of Autonomy was supposed to form the central part of the US group’s move into software.
“We are finally starting to see what really happened with Autonomy”.
“HP’s own documents, which the court will see, make clear that HP was simply incompetent in its operation of Autonomy, and the acquisition was doomed from the very beginning”. Before going ahead with the acquisition they discussed firing their CEO.
Business Weekly put documents in front of hP last week which included the due diligence report from KPMG on Autonomy as well as email exchanges between leading HP executives which showed how they were agonising over committing to buy Autonomy.
Lynch further stated that neither he nor anyone else misled HP over Autonomy, and that the deal was just one of several that HP mishandled over the years.
Left without its top advocates within HP, Autonomy was forced to fend for itself against a tide of office politics and misguided policies that seemed to undercut the merger’s chances of success at every turn, Lynch has claimed.
In fact, HP Chairman Ray Lane made a last-minute attempt to convince then-CEO Leo Apotheker to call off the deal, according to a Wall Street Journal report from last week that cited an analysis commissioned by HP and written by its legal firm in early 2014.
“Meg Whitman (HP’s CEO) can explain all this to a judge when we finish this in court once and for all”.
HP could not be reached for comment.
A HP spokesperson told TechWeekEurope: “Mike Lynch’s lawsuit is a laughable and desperate attempt to divert attention from the $5 billion lawsuit HP has filed and the ongoing criminal investigation”. In a few cases, HP says, Autonomy used third parties known as Value Added Resellers or VARs to “fabricate or accelerate” sales that were reported as revenue by Autonomy.
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The company said in a statement that it “anxiously looks forward to the day Mr. Lynch and Mr. Hussain will be forced to answer for their actions in court”.
