Autonomy and HP CEOs plan for the future
One of Leo Apotheker’s last projects before departing as Hewlett-Packard CEO was the acquisition of U.K. software company Autonomy Corp. however, Autonomy’s CEO Mike Lynch says the logic behind his company’s $10.3 billion takeover by HP hadn’t been clearly communicated and he plans to stay in his current position for at least a couple of years, according to Bloomberg.
Reports are surfacing that the plan to eject Apotheker came just a couple days before it was formal that Meg Whitman would come in to take over the reins. Under Apotheker, the company felt three sales forecasts cuts and strategy shifts in addition to the completion of Autonomy. He was also responsible for a possible spinoff of the personal computer business and killing of HP’s WebOS tablets and smartphones.
“It was a shame that the rationale hadn’t been clearly communicated,” Lynch said of the takeover of the U.K.’s second- largest software company in the article. “It’s not just another software acquisition.”
Lynch founded Autonomy in 1996 and owns 8 percent of the company’s shares and will report directly to Whitman. She said yesterday she planned to continue with Apotheker’s strategy to avoid alienating shareholders unsettled by changes in course under the previous tenure. Autonomy will give HP software that searches a broad range of data, including e-mails, music, video and posts on social networks. The CEO plans to focus on tying the company’s software to HP’s hardware.
