Hewlett-Packard, Autonomy and 'Rules of the Garage'
It remains to be seen if Hewlett-Packard's investors (or the SEC and the FBI ) will accept a "shift the blame" defense for an $8.8 billion charge it is taking for the $10 billion purchase of Autonomy, a Big Data firm with a big accounting problem that was the landmine in an otherwise unimpressive Q4 earnings report. For those who missed the news from Palo Alto, here’s a brief rundown: According to CEO Meg Whitman , Autonomy had been billing low margin hardware sales as high-margin software sales and booked some deals with partners as revenue even though no money changed hands. Making matters worse, the Autonomy charge was the second acquisition-related, $8 billion+ write down in two consecutive quarters. Shareholders quickly drove H-P down 12% to a nearly 52-week low. Now starts the finger-pointing. For his part, former CEO (for 10 months) Leo Apotheker is shocked, shocked that the deal he put together may have been massively flawed: "Th...