A trial that started Monday in San Francisco will determine, as US prosecutors put it , whether or not Mike Lynch is guilty of “the largest fraud in the history” of Silicon Valley.
The Autonomy founder sold his software company to Hewlett Packard in 2011 for $11.7bn and denies falsifying accounts ahead of that deal.
Irrespective of the outcome, evidence filed as the case proceeds will offer glimpses of the man and the organisation he shaped.
For instance, students of corporate communication might consider a 2009 performance that fused appreciation of author AA Milne and illustrator EH Shepard with apparent contempt for the work of investment bank analysts.
Ian Black, who was then Autonomy’s global head of operations, described the moment to the US authorities when interviewed as a witness (he is not accused of any wrongdoing). Both he and Lynch declined to comment.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll let the FBI begin :
The boardroom had been set up with theatre seating, a lamp, and a winged chair. The analysts started to arrive and by 8:50A LYNCH arrived with book and a case that that looked purposefully made.
There was script in the book and on the right a series of PowerPoint slides. LYNCH told BLACK to read the script. BLACK began to read and LYNCH yelled to him “Fucking ham this up”.
The script started with “Hello Boys and Girls”. BLACK went and gave the presentation to the analysts. None of the audience knew what to do and were clearly offended.
It relays only that Black thought the story’s “two naughty animals in the forest” referred to analysts who had questioned Autonomy’s cash conversion.
Prosecutors, however, did include the slides. What follows is our attempt to guess the script:
Once upon a time there was a little company full of hopes and dreams that City folk struggled to understand.
Winnie-the-Pooh read the two notices very carefully, first from left to right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to left.
“That’s funny,” he thought. “I know I had a jar of honey there. A full jar, full of honey right up to the top and it had HUNNY written on it, so that I should know it was honey. That’s very funny.”
For some time now Pooh had been saying “yes” and “no” in turn, with his eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying.
“ Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?”
“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought. Piglet was comforted by this.
“I see, I see,” said Pooh, nodding his head. “Talking about large somethings,” he went on dreamily, “I generally have a small something about now——about this time in the morning,” and he looked wistfully at the cupboard in the corner of Owl’s parlour; “just a mouthful of condensed milk or what not, with perhaps a lick of honey——”
Who found the Tail? ”I,” said Pooh, “At a quarter to two (Only it was quarter to eleven really), I found the Tail! ”
A goloptious full-up pot too, And I don’t know where it’s got to, No, I don’t know where it’s gone— Well, it’s funny.
“What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?” said Pooh. “For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.”
For some minutes he lay there miserably, but when the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalump was licking its jaws, and saying to itself, “Very good honey this, I don’t know when I’ve tasted better,” Pooh could bear it no longer.
Pooh’s first idea was that they should dig a Very Deep Pit, and then the Heffalump would come along and fall into the Pit.
According to the exhibit (number 227 in the docket ):
After the reading LYNCH walked into the office and BLACK told him they had just insulted everyone.
Lynch responded “Fuck them”.
Further reading: — Lynch mobbed (FTAV, 2009) — Autonomy: a postscript (FTAV, 2012) — Inevitably, eventually, Autonomy (FTAV, 2012)