Autonomy, recently acquired by Hewlett-Packard, is under fire amid allegations of accounting "improprieties" that HP says led it to take an $8.8 billion charge on the deal.
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Mike Lynch, the former CEO of Autonomy who is accused of masterminding the accounting fraud, has denied all charges.
In an interview on CNBC's "Closing Bell" Tuesday, Lynch said the HP allegations were "absolutely factually incorrect" and said the problems must've been due to "mismanagement" at the company after he left.
Lynch has appeared on CNBC on numerous occasions, discussing everything from how the company has benefited from regulation to why the stock went down even when earnings were in-line with expectations. Here's what he had to say in past appearances on CNBC.
US Companies More Positive than UK? — Mar. 12, 2010
US companies just seem more positive in their outlooks than UK companies, Lynch said in an interview with CNBC's "Strictly Money," but said that may just be a cultural difference. "We're not always there looking for the positives sometimes," he said of UK businesses.
Autonomy Benefits from New Regulations — Dec. 24, 2009
Autonomy, a British information-technology firm, jumped 60 percent in 2009. In this interview with CNBC, Lynch said Autonomy, which has a part of its business that specializes in helping firms deal with regulations, has benefited from new regulations and that he sees another three to four years of increased regulation.
Autonomy Earnings In Line, Confident on Year — Oct. 20, 2009
Autonomy delivered third-quarter 2009 earnings that hit analysts' target but the stock took a hit anyway. What did Lynch make of that? "I've given up trying to understand the stock movement related to the company!" Lynch said on CNBC, laughing. "The company is going incredibly well." He noted that the company had preannounced the results and said he has seen a pattern where, whenever the company reports results, the stock goes down for two weeks and then recovers. Lynch said he was confident about the company's performance for the year and that it was well-positioned to benefit from any upturn in the economy. He said the regulatory part of the business has done well through the downturn and that he expects the non-regulatory part of the business, which has performed in-line, to recover with the economy.
Autonomy Shares Sink — Jul. 16, 2009
Autonomy shares took a hit after disappointing second-quarter sales. Was there a reason for the miss? "No, they didn't [miss]," Lynch told CNBC. "If you actually look at consensus that we run, then the numbers are in-line. We actually preannounced them at the beginning of the month. And those have come in as expected. The earnings were actually ahead of the numbers that were there before." So, why did they preannounce? Was there a whisper the results might disappoint? "What we do when we see part of the announcement, in this case it was the EPS number being ahead of what the market's expecting, then we do that preannouncement ... When you've got that situation, what is better to do is make sure the information is in the market and that you're being transparent about it." He categorizes his outlook as "cautiously optimistic," citing the fact the regulatory side of the business has held up in a tough economy.
