Autonomy’s former chief financial officer is seeking to block the maker of expensive printer ink, HP from settling three shareholder lawsuits over its troubled purchase of the British software company.
Sushovan Hussain, said the “collusive and unfair” settlement in which HP officials are wrongly absolved of a $8.8 billion writedown.
Hussain, said the “collusive and unfair” settlement, if approved by a federal judge, would let HP “forever bury from disclosure the real reason for its 2012 write-down of Autonomy.
“This motion reveals the depth of the corruption that permeates the settlement,” the spokesman said. “The shareholders who have borne the losses get nothing, and learn nothing about what really happened.”
He said that it ignored HP’s destruction of Autonomy’s success after the acquisition.
The June 30 accord called for HP shareholders to end efforts to force current and former officials, including Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman, to pay damages to the Palo Alto, California-based company over its disastrous $11.1 billion Autonomy purchase.
Instead, the shareholders agreed to help HP pursue sue former Autonomy officials like Hussain and former CEO Michael Lynch.
HP announced the $8.8 billion writedown in November 2012, just over one year after buying Autonomy, and claimed it as down to accounting fraud and inflated financials by Autonomy executives.
HP spokesman Howard Clabo shrugged and said that Hussain’s opposition to the settlement is baseless. He thought that at the end of the process, the jury will conclude that Hussain engaged in a multi-billion dollar fraud.
