The ex-CEO of autonomy was just charged with fraud in the US:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46397367. Interestingly, Mike Lynch is a longstanding client of
Slaughter and May.
I talked about this HP-Autonomy story in some of our M&A classes. HP bought Autonomy in 2011 for $11.7bn. A year later, HP had to write down $8.84bn, claiming it was due to "accounting improprieties and disclosure failures" by Autonomy. Autonomy said HP had just undertaken poor due diligence.
Goes to show an example of the risks involved in tech M&A and the importance of due diligence in an M&A deal.