Autonomy founder to take HP claim to regulators

Autonomy's Irish founder Mike Lynch plans to ask US regulators to investigate evidence he believes shows Hewlett-Packard made "false representations to the market" over its massive writedown on its acquisition of the UK software maker.

The entrepreneur said he would go to the Securities and Exchange Commission over a document that he said sheds new light on HP's reasoning for its $8.8 billion writedown in November 2012, $5.5 billion of which was stated to be due to "accounting misrepresentations" at the company.

HP said it welcomed any intervention from the authorities.

“The same fertile imagination that was behind a massive fraud is apparently still hard at work making up stories,” it said.– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014)