On Monday, a lawsuit was filed against Hewlett-Packard Co, according to a report by Reuters. The company was sued by an investor who made allegations that Hewlett knew statements about its acquisition of Autonomy were misleading and caused the stock to drop, according to attorneys representing the plaintiff in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, which is a proposed class action lawsuit, was filed in a federal court in San Francisco. Last Tuesday, Hewlett Packard announced an $8.8 billion write-down on the company’s acquisition of Autonomy, a software company from Britain. In the announcement, Hewlett Packard said that Autonomy inflated its sales with improper accounting practices.
The co-founder of Autonomy, Mike Lynch, continues to deny the allegations made by Hewlett Packard in that announcement. Autonomy was purchased for $11.1 billion in 2011 by Hewlett Packard, which said it has told regulators about the issue in the United States and in Britain.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiff said that Hewlett Packard decided to hide the notion that it gained control of Autonomy based on unreliable statements. The lawsuit is the first to be filed by an investor of the company since the scandal broke. The lawsuit also claims that Hewlett Packard did not reveal that the company attempted to get out of the Autonomy agreement before it became official because of the accounting problems.