![Tech, Accounts, Autonomy: cure and prevention Tech, Accounts, Autonomy: cure and prevention](https://media.lesechos.com/api/v1/images/view/6665a2e3f5cb6759e0213273/1280x720/01101707387109-web-tete.jpg)
“I trust the justice of my country.” The British tech “tycoon” Mike Lynch did well above all to trust American justice. He has just been acquitted, in criminal proceedings, in San Francisco, after having been found liable, in civil proceedings, in London, in connection with the sale of his software publisher Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. The financial director had been sentenced to 5 years in prison for embellishing growth. And Deloitte had been sanctioned by the UK audit regulator.
The affair will nevertheless go down in the annals of value destruction. It reminds us of the extent to which financial investors demand ever-increasing figures from companies, without putting the same energy into improving the quality of accounts and “due diligence”.
First consumers
They are the primary consumers, as recalled by the Brydon report on the effectiveness of audits, commissioned across the Channel, after the failures of Carillion and Patisserie Valerie.
As early as 2012, the American PC and printer giant had depreciated 85% of this purchase of 10.3 billion dollars, including 5 billion due to accounting errors, and the rest for the overly optimistic business plan.
Wall Street had the impression of having done the “job”, by sanctioning the “deal” as soon as it was announced, considered too expensive, then by pushing for the split of HP and HP Enterprise in 2015. However, it would have been better to prevent than cure.
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