Lynch was 'willing to lie' to High Court over Autonomy whistleblower, claims HPE

@ Gareth...

Hi Gareth, firstly, many thanks for the excellent coverage of this case throughout the year. I'm sure we're all riveted by this case and are all interested to see how it turns out next year. Keep up the great work.

In your ongoing reports of the case though, we've read some evidence that the underlying root of the fraud has been discussed in terms of accounting irregularities - but seemingly at a high level. I was just wondering as to whether in actual court (unless I missed a story or two due to holidays) whether HP has delivered evidence in terms of a detailed forensic accounting analysis of the fraud, and how it all adds up to the tune of the $8bn or so they are suing over?

Many thanks.

Big (Wo)Man Syndrome

Never underestimate the discarding of logic that is possible when senior people desperately want to add some M&A activity to their CVs.

I once worked for a company that took over (covered as a "merger") a pure R&D company based in France (we were in Scotland), that was obviously seriously loss-making and underperforming, but which was backed by the same venture capitalists as the company for which I worked. It seemed obvious to me, a mere IT bod, that there was no corporate fit or merged value; it was all based on wishful thinking and driven by bosses' greed and arrogance. I was told to fuse the two IT estates "so that they're completely seamless". This seemed utterly daft to me, as there were about 10 people, in a company of 400, who were common to both companies.

I decided to back myself, and "merged" the IT estate with a sort of firewall-API that used a VPN and some simple info transfer, but I had countless sleepless nights, thinking the great and the good must be seeing some secret business sauce that was invisible to me.

Two years later, my boss called me in. He said "You've got three hours to disconnect any connections between us and France, and you have to keep this quiet." The chickens had come home to roost and the money pit that was the acquired company was flogged off for its assets. Because of my earlier decision, we could do the disconnect in 30 minutes, but it would have taken weeks or months had I done as I was told at the time.

The only difference between my understanding at the time, and the understanding of the great and the good, was that I didn't get shedloads of cash and share options as a result of a "successful corporate merger". The only difference between my anecdote and this article is scale.

It's a tough call...

Weighing up Autonomy's foundations of bullshit against HP's woeful incompetence. If I was the judge I'd tell them both to get the fück out of my courtroom right now or I'd have them cavity searched.