Who buys a business - large or small - without auditing the books? Nice going, Meg. You would have made a GREAT governor.....
CEO Meg Whitman avoided calling it a fraud, but said Tuesday that there were “serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy Corporation PLC.”
deceptive accounting, failure to disclose, and lying.
Failure to disclose is, imho, the worst. That means you couldn't audit it even if you wanted to. It's like buying a house with a cracked foundation that isn't disclosed. If you miss it, then it's your tough luck.
This is not to say that HP couldn't have done better, but if they don't go into court after some of that cash they paid for that company, THEN we'll know that they really were idiots.
“What I will say is that the board relied on audited financials. Audited by Deloitte — not ‘Brand X’ accounting firm, but Deloitte. During our very extensive due diligence process, we hired KPMG to audit Deloitte. And neither of them saw what we now see after someone came forward to point us in the right direction.”
Somebody's in really big trouble.
Once a company’s had the books looked at Deloitte and Deloitte’s work audited by KPMG, what more can you expect them to do?