HP coughs up $100 MEEELLION to settle Autonomy lawsuit HP has coughed up $100m (£65m) to settle its legal dispute with a Dutch pension fund over its massive $8.8bn (£5.6bn) Autonomy write-down. HP confirmed today that it has entered into a settlement agreement with PGGM Vermogensbeheer, the lead plaintiff in the securities class action arising from the impairment charge taken by …
"While HP believes the action has no merit, it is desirable and beneficial to HP and its shareholders to resolve settle the case as further litigation would be burdensome and protracted,"
Couldn't even manage to resolve settle the wording of their own press release on the subject. Diligence? Doubt they can spell it. Scant evidence of even basic competence.
"No individual is contributing to the settlement. HP and its current and former officers, directors, and advisors will be released from any Autonomy-related securities claims as part of the settlement,"
Translation:
Fair cop. 'ere's a hundred thousand grand. Not a word eh? You ain't even seen me right. Take the missus for a nice dinner eh? Cushdy.
Also don't forget the billions HP will make when the memristor comes out in 2014. Oh wait.
Yup. HP's messiah component is delayed again.
Of course, some IT technologies have taken a long time to mature, and then became commonplace. LCD screens, for example - TFT was invented in '74, but we didn't have good IPS-based color LCD screens for another 22 years. Now they're everywhere. Or flash memory: Toshiba introduced NOR flash commercially in '94, but it took another 11 years for NAND-flash removable memory products to appear. Again, they're now ubiquitous.
But more often, these much-heralded technologies stumble along for a while but never become more than niche products. And NV memory certainly has its share of losers - remember bubble memory? HP's memristor chips sound good on paper, but until they have usable product available it's hard to be optimistic.
I wonder if the people they (HP) are suing over this can use this as a precident to say
'They knew they made a business cock-up. See how they have paid off investors...'
I get the feeling that I'd better take my pension NOW while there are still funds in the pot. They might not be there in a years time.
"Where did the responsibility for this cockup lie?"
I think HP would continue to fight any payout tooth and nail if they had any confidence in being able to blame someone else for the Autonomy cockup, but the reality is that HP decided to buy, so HP was supposed to do its due diligence to see if what they bought was OK.
That they outsourced this due diligence is secondary, you can't outsource responsibility (well, not quite, if you're corporate security manager without a budget to do your job you *know* you're just there to be sacked when it goes wrong).
I don't like this "paying without admitting guilt" thing much, because to me that simply says that those with the bigger wallets can do the same thing over and over again, all they need to say is "oops, have a cheque" and walk off into the sunset. Not a very good way to enforce laws IMHO, but as I don't live there I may miss something.
HP directors have used insurance cash to pay off the investors to ensure that they can't be sued for incompetence.
Nice way to ensure that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, no-one can say that the HP (mis)directors were in any way to blame for this cluster****.
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