Rebirth of England

Chapter 775 Mike Lynch

The reason why Barron did not want to have too much contact with Mike Lynch was that he did not want to be too deeply involved in a future transaction of Autonomy...

In Barron's previous life, in October next year, HP, which hopes to expand its business scope, will acquire Autonomy for $11 billion!

You know, earlier, Lynch wanted to sell Autonomy to Oracle for $6 billion, but was rejected by the other party...

In the end, Lynch still had a way to sell Autonomy at a high price, allowing HP, which was trying to catch up with competitors such as IBM in the enterprise application software market, to acquire Autonomy at a sky-high price of $11 billion...

The most important thing is that this transaction was still acquired in cash!

In fact, this acquisition of HP was promoted by HP CEO Leo Apotheker at the time-the acquisition was criticized by Silicon Valley for being too expensive and was strongly opposed by the company's CFO, but it was still approved by the board of directors in the end.

The reason why the HP board of directors approved the acquisition at that time was that they trusted the financial audit report of Autonomy by the auditing agency Deloitte.

As part of due diligence, HP also hired KPMG to audit Deloitte's report, and investment bank intermediaries such as Barclays Bank also participated in the acquisition.

Neither Deloitte nor KPMG was able to find any problems - until Autonomy founder Mike Lynch was dismissed in April 2012, a senior member of Autonomy's leadership team took the initiative to "blow the news". HP found through investigation that Autonomy had a series of suspicious accounting and business practices, which led to serious deviations in the valuation when HP acquired the company.

In the end, HP found that the Autonomy company they acquired a year ago was not worth $11 billion at all. They recorded a non-cash goodwill impairment charge in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2012. The cost related to Autonomy was worth $8.8 billion...

And most of it - more than $5 billion, was related to serious accounting misconduct, false statements and misdisclosure of circumstances.

This also means that in just one year, HP has lost 80% of the $11 billion it spent on acquiring Autonomy.

From that time on, HP began to sue Autonomy's founder, Mike Lynch, known as the "British Bill Gates", and tried to extradite him to the United States for trial...

This lawsuit can be said to have been a marathon for more than ten years...

The final result was that twelve years later, he was finally found not guilty, and then two months later, the cruise ship he was on encountered a tornado at sea. Most of the crew on the ship survived, only Lynch, his family, and his defense lawyer died in the accident.

It seems to be an accident...

Well, at about the same time as this accident, Mike Lynch's partner and another defendant in the same case with HP, Stephen Chamberlain, Autonomy's former vice president of finance, was hit and killed by a car while jogging.

This is also the reason why Barron doesn't want to have too close contact with Mike Lynch.

It's not that Barron is afraid of the mastermind behind Lynch and a series of "accidents" in the future. In his previous life, Barron didn't think so much about this matter, but just regarded it as a curious thing.

But now with his status and position, looking back at this matter, although he can't say that he can directly guess which party is behind the scenes, it is obvious that it is not HP - and after so many years of litigation, HP has not been able to convict Mike Lynch in the United States. If a certain force behind the scenes can only use physical methods to deal with him and his partner Stephen Chamberlain, then the other party's power is just like that...

Of course, it is not without the capital or power behind Autonomy to deal with the possibility of Mike Lynch and others to silence them, but that... is another story.

After all, when Autonomy was sold to HP for a whopping $11 billion, Mike Lynch himself only received about $1 billion, and more of the benefits went to other shareholders and the capital behind them...

If they were ruthless enough, they would have solved the problem after Mike Lynch was found not guilty. Obviously, the first suspect of the public would be the "furious" HP, and this was a very successful diversion of attention.

The reason why Barron did not want to be involved too much in this was that he did not want to be in the whirlpool of public opinion because of this matter. Now his fund only holds 25% of Autonomy's shares, and it is enough to make a small profit in the transaction next year.

In addition, the reason why Digital Future invested in Autonomy was because the company's technology was indeed unique in obtaining some intelligence.

The intelligence system controlled by Barron used Autonomy's technology to screen intelligence from some public information, and this method was still very effective...

"Dear Duke, I am glad that you are in America again..."

Barron quickly put Mike Lynch's matter behind him. Today, his Long Island estate welcomed another guest, Robert Kennedy, an old friend of the Kennedy family.

After O'Guanhai took office, it is obvious that the Kennedy family has become active again.

This is not surprising. After all, O'Guanhai himself received great support from the Kennedy family in the previous election.

As mentioned before, there are no talented people in politics among the descendants of the Kennedy family. The few members who entered the American political arena did not perform as well as the three Kennedy brothers...

Therefore, they can only look for potential politicians to win over and serve as spokespersons for their family.

To some extent, O'Guanhai is now playing such a role.

Of course, even so, the relationship between them can only be said to be more cooperative, not too close.

But at least now it has given the Kennedy family more capital in politics.

Well, the relationship between the Kennedy family and Barron is similar.

In America, Barron sometimes needs the influence of his family, and so does the Kennedy family, so that when the interests of both parties are consistent, they can have good cooperation.

"Although you were not in America before, I often heard about you at gatherings, Your Highness..."

"Oh?"

"For example, you have made several big moves recently, which has attracted a lot of attention from many people."

"Are you talking about Pfizer Pharmaceuticals?"

Barron said with a smile:

"I manage assets for many people, so I always need to make them get a satisfactory return. I have not hidden my views and have always said that I am very optimistic about the recovery of the American economy..."