Comments by "" (@EbenBransome) on "the autonomy fraud case and the mysterious deaths of Mike Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain" video.

  1. Says what all? It's irrelevant. He was an academic who built up a medium sized IT company, but seems to have acquired a dodgy accountant. Not the first time. Not his fault.
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  2. It was much more likely a water spout (as described by Dante in The Inferno , they have long existed in the Med.) They can move fast, arise quickly and do immense damage due to the extremely concentrated energy at sea level.
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  3. Small but powerful waterspouts have been known in the area for a long time. Dante actually describes one in The Inferno which "struck the forepart of the ship and the prow went down", showing how small it was at sea level.
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  4. I decided it was time to retire when the boss decided it was time to enter the US market. Having worked for a US corporation for years, I knew that large US companies are exactly as Shakespeare describes them: the big ones gobble up the small ones. They are also mostly intensely litigious and greedy. Autonomy was acquired because the CEO of HP, Léo Apotheker, came from SAP (a software company) and wanted to turn HP into a software company. For those who don't know, HP began as a scientific instrument company and was involved in PCs and mobile phones. After the (some would call it disastrous) tenure of Carly Fiorina the HP board wanted something new and took on Apotheker, perhaps not knowing that, without saying why, SAP had not renewed his contract. Apotheker was perhaps desperate for a success for his new strategy and pushed for the Autonomy acquisition. The outcome of legal cases suggests that there was a bad actor in Autonomy but it wasn't Lynch or his partner. However, HP in doing due diligence - which they did with great speed for such a large M&A - seemed not to notice anything wrong, and Apotheker was prepared to pay 60% over the Autonomy share price, he was so anxious to get it. Problems rapidly emerged. Apotheker got HP out of the mobile phone business - what has been described as a "remarkable decision" in view of what happened thereafter. He lasted 10 months before the Board sacked him, presumably for three terrible decisions: Buying Autonomy at a huge markup, getting out of mobile phones and planning to get out of PCs - the last of which was avoided just in time. Like Truss, Apotheker lost billions - an estimated $30 billion for HP - and exited on a $13 million cushion. If there is a villain in this story it isn't Lynch or Chamberlain. The fact that Apotheker is still around, and still a director or chair of numerous companies, rather puts paid to the conspircy theories because if there is anybody HP shareholders would cheerfully see fall under a bus, he fits the bill.
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  5. The alternative story is that HP lost its way, took on Fiorina who took it further down the tubes, and then the hapless Apotheker who wanted to turn HP into a software company, abandoned the mobile phone market and seems to have become obsessed with the Autonomy acquisition; neither he nor the CFO really seem to have done proper due diligence on the acqusition, and then when HP got into financial trouble the shareholders wanted to sue everybody in sight. But who spends $11 billion carelessly? US corporations and Wall Street, that's who. Look at the acquisition of Twitter and the valuations of Tesla and Trump Media for more recent examples. HP had gone from a company that was a world leader in the handheld market to one which had a failed launch of two mobile phones and then just got out, even as Nokia, Samsung and Apple created a vast new market between them. It was that which really did for them; trying to change horses in midstream while failing to look the new horse in the mouth. Blaming Autonomy for HP's failure is just...well, typical of some ex-HP execs I've talked to.
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  6. Lynch's share of the sale was £500 million and most of that has probably gone in US legal costs.
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  7. Small tornados (waterspouts) can be very destructive and also very small at water level, as well as being fast moving. They happen on land too. A couple of years ago we had a very small one, you could track it by the roof tiles that it removed from a succession of houses. It was no more that 4 tiles wide, missed us completely, clipped our neighbour, and removed the caps from the roofs of a couple of other houses.
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  8. I like many others followed the whole story in Computer Weekly and The Register with growing disbelief at HP's apparent incompetence. It seems a jury agreed. I've done another post which provides some background, but most people I've discussed it with think the problems lay with Leo the Chemist (Leo Apotheker, CEO of HP) and his CFO. They wanted Autonomy, come hell or high water.
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