The long-running legal case has now involved the head of the Catholic Church.
Chicago Tribune reported on the Vatican’s involvement in the legal case between HP and the founders of Autonomy, which it acquired in 2012 and the deal for which has seen the OEM accuse Autonomy founder Michael Lynch of misleading it about the company’s finances.
The case began back in November 2012 when HP claimed Autonomy “misled” it and its shareholders about the state of its finances, with HP shareholders suing the OEM for loss of money as a consequence of poor quarterly results after the acquisition.
HP had revealed that in acquiring Autonomy, it had been forced to take an $8.8 billion (€6.4 billion) “impairment charge” in November 2012, with over $5 billion (€3.6 billion) of this said by HP to be due to “serious accounting improprieties, misrepresentation and disclosure failures”.
The Vatican’s involvement comes due to the “proposed use” of Autonomy software to “help digitise the Vatican’s library”, which Chicago Tribune noted “potentially lends support to HP’s accusation that Autonomy booked sales” in account documents “even when the intended end-user had not decided to buy the software”.
According to sources, one of Autonomy’s resellers, MicroTechnologies LLC (MicroTech) had been booked in by the company as having resold Autonomy software to the Vatican worth $11.5 million (€8.5 million) in revenue, but the Vatican says it “did not purchase the software” from either Autonomy or MicroTech; despite this, Autonomy booked in the transaction based on it selling the software to MicroTech.
The sources stated that the deal “illustrates one way in which HP contends the software company gave a distorted impression of how rapidly it was growing”, and according to another source, Autonomy’s move to book revenue like this “was permissible under UK accounting standards” as well as being “blessed” by auditor company Deloitte.
Further evidence showed that MicroTech wrote to the Vatican library “seeking payment” for the software earlier this year, with CEO and President Anthony Jimenez stating Autonomy had requested MicroTech buy the software so that his company could “participate as a reseller”, with MicroTech “surprised” to see another company, NTT Data Corp. from Japan, announce it had been selected to digitise the library.
Jiminez asked the library if Autonomy software had been used at all, and when payment was made for the software “and who received it”, with his request for receipt and payment meeting a response from library prefect Monsignore Cesare Pasini, which stated that the assumption Autonomy software was used “is absolutely false”, with no involvement agreed and that the library has “never dealt with Microtech”; both HP and Jiminez declined to comment on the reports.
The Recycler reported last month that HP had settled a long-running court case with its own shareholders over the disastrous deal.