[manishsharan]

Wasn't Autonomy a public company when HP acquired it ? Was it not the responsibility of HP board and management and their investment bankers to do due diligence before they made such a big acquisition ?

Could it be that HP management , having lost the position of largest PC maker to Lenovo, is looking to throw our attention away from their incompetence.

[roc]

Further along these lines, as a publicly traded company, isn't any cooking of the books a criminal act, regardless of the HP/sale angle?

[pisarzp]

I agree. This story is quite hard to believe... Nobody spends $12bn without looking carefully into the books. There always is a long and thorough Due Diligence process on transactions like this one. Investment bankers, lawyers and accountants get get their fees mainly for going through every single document in the company...

[chucknelson]

Apparently Deloitte was supposed to do this, with KPMG as a safety net. It took a third (and also expensive) consulting firm (PwC) to notice issues.

I wonder if there will be any client fallout at either Deloitte or KPMG for this. Probably not...

Maybe HP is just trying to blame it on them? Who knows!