But in charging gross improprieties at Autonomy, H.P. has attacked a man who may be Britain’s most notable and contentious technology executive, and one of Europe’s biggest self-made successes. Mr. Lynch, 47, sits on the boards of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the British Library, and was awarded an Order of the British Empire for his service to business. 
 
 Before Hewlett-Packard bought Autonomy, it was listed on Britain’s major stock index. Its prominence allowed it to hire top engineers, who were worked remorselessly hard compared with their Silicon Valley counterparts, former employees say. 
 
 People who have worked with Mr. Lynch note both his accomplishments and his temper. “I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone an idiot in the office, but I’m direct,” he said. “That’s part of getting stuff done. I find good people and I value them. That is how I’ve been able to do what I’ve done.” 
 
 While Autonomy is not well known in the United States, it was considered a pioneer in the booming field of Big Data, and its pattern-seeking algorithms are at work at over 400 companies, including Oracle, Adobe, Cisco and, even before the purchase, Hewlett-Packard. Mr. Lynch personally made about $800 million from the sale to H.P. 
 
 Even with all of his money, intellect and a doctorate from Cambridge, what Mr. Lynch says he cannot figure out is how H.P. thinks he has done anything wrong. 
 
 Hewlett-Packard has said that its internal investigation, set off by a whistle-blower, uncovered major problems at Autonomy that were present before the merger. Among them were the booking of hardware sales as higher-margin software sales, and resellers reporting sales that did not exist. 
 
 Mr. Lynch said Autonomy’s sales fell off a cliff after it merged with Hewlett-Packard — not because it suddenly had to account for things legally, as H.P. claims, but because of institutional foot-dragging. 
 
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 “They drove out the top 100 people from Autonomy, and a bunch of trainees were put in” to sell Autonomy products, he said. “H.P. salesmen got better commissions for selling our competitors’ products.” 
 
 Mr. Lynch said H.P. told him it could not formally approve Autonomy’s software for use on its customers’ servers, “when it was already running on thousands of H.P. machines around the world.” He added: “H.P. has core structural problems.” 
 
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 Hewlett-Packard counters that Mr. Lynch was a singular force of resistance to the merger as soon as his check cleared. 
 
 “He was at every strategy session, was in person or on video for every meeting of the executive council,” said an H.P. executive briefed on the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. “He wouldn’t work with anyone. Sometimes he was enthusiastic, but other times he’d say, ‘This makes no sense. I’m going back to London.’ ” 
 
 On at least two different cross-country flights on an H.P. private jet, the executive said, Mr. Lynch went to the back of the aircraft and refused to talk with anyone for the entire flight. 
 
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 A spokeswoman for Mr. Lynch, Vanessa Colomar, said he had not been on the corporate jet before and “didn’t know the etiquette.” She said he spent the time working. 
 
 As for the charge that Hewlett-Packard did not personally contact Mr. Lynch before announcing the write-down, Ms. Whitman said in an interview on Tuesday, “Mike Lynch is aware we have questions.” 
 
 The conversation in June with Mr. Lynch concerned several specific software sales by Autonomy, the H.P. executive said. “He was evasive, not forthcoming, or he didn’t remember,” the executive said. “After something like that, you don’t bother telling him what you are investigating.” 
 
 Mr. Lynch said the conversation was supposed to be about his severance, but quickly became an “ambush.” 
 
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 Hewlett-Packard has said that it contacted both the Securities and Exchange Commission and Britain’s Serious Fraud Office about Autonomy’s accounting. Mr. Lynch said he had heard from neither organization. 
 
 The pattern of dysfunction at Autonomy that each side says the other fostered illustrates how hard it is for any two companies to fully understand each other before merging. It also calls into question whether what remains of Autonomy, a core element of Hewlett-Packard’s plan for recovery, will quickly or easily deliver meaningful results. 
 
 Then there are the questions about how Autonomy’s accountants, plus more than a dozen other highly regarded law, banking and accounting firms that received millions for working on the company’s sale, could have missed the problems. 
 
 Deloitte, Autonomy’s regular auditor, reviewed Autonomy’s books on a quarterly basis, Mr. Lynch said, and was given invoices for every transaction over $100,000, plus those for a random batch of smaller deals. 
 
 Nigel Mercer, the Deloitte executive whose name appears on Autonomy’s last annual report before the deal, did not return a call requesting comment. In a statement issued on Tuesday, Deloitte denied any knowledge of improprieties. 
 
 Howard Clabo, a spokesman for Hewlett-Packard, said that “when a group of people willfully distort the truth in their financial results, it can be very difficult to detect.” At the same time, he said, H.P. is “committed to vigorously pursuing all legal options that are in the best interests of H.P. and our shareholders.” 
 
 Mr. Lynch sees another possible motive in Ms. Whitman’s huge write-down, which sent H.P.’s stock to a level it briefly touched 10 years ago: “There is an attempt to set the bar so low that you can’t possibly fail.” 
 
 Mr. Clabo dismissed this idea. “H.P.’s leadership is committed to providing our investors, employees and customers with a transparent view of the challenges the company faces,” he said. “It is absurd to suggest that H.P. would take an $8.8 billion impairment charge for any other reason.” 
 
 If Mr. Lynch is correct, then H.P.’s stock may be a huge bargain. But he isn’t buying. 
 
 “They have no strategy and vision,” he said. “This was about fighting among divisions.” 

 Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) was sued by an investor over an $8.8 billion writedown that the company said was partly related to falsified finances at Autonomy Corp., the British software maker it bought last year. 
 
 The shareholder, in a complaint filed yesterday federal court in San Francisco, alleges that Hewlett-Packard issued false and misleading statements. The company concealed that it had gained control of Autonomy based on financial statements that were unreliable because of accounting manipulation, according to the complaint. Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman and the company’s former CEO, Leo Apotheker, are named as defendants, along with Chief Financial Officer Catherine Lesjak. 
 
 “At the time Hewlett-Packard agreed in principle to acquire Autonomy, defendants were looking to unwind the deal in light of the accounting irregularities that plagued Autonomy’s financial statements,” according to the complaint. 
 
 Hewlett-Packard said Nov. 20 that $5 billion of the total charge is due to accounting practices, which were disclosed by a senior executive at Autonomy. Hewlett-Packard said it referred the matter to U.S. and U.K. securities regulators and will also pursue civil litigation. 
 
 Financial Performance 
 
 Hewlett-Packard said in a statement last week that some former members of Autonomy’s management team used accounting misrepresentations to inflate its underlying financial performance before the acquisition. Mike Lynch, who founded Autonomy, defended the company’s accounting practices in an interview last week. 
 
 The complaint filed yesterday seeks class-action status and unspecified damages for all investors who bought company shares from Aug. 19, 2011, to Nov. 20, 2012. 
 
 Michael Thacker, a spokesman for Palo Alto, California- based Hewlett-Packard, declined to comment on the complaint. 
 
 The suit also names as a defendant Hewlett-Packard Senior Vice President James T. Murrin. As the company’s chief accounting officer during the period at issue, Murrin sold 132,500 shares for almost $3.5 million while “in the possession of materially adverse and non-public information,” according to the complaint. 
 
 Negative Trends 
 
 Hewlett-Packard is accused in the complaint of concealing negative business trends concerning the profit margins of its enterprise services business, formerly known as Electronic Data Systems Corp., which Hewlett-Packard acquired in 2008 for $13.2 billion under then-Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd. As a result of the misleading statements, Hewlett-Packard’s stock traded at artificially inflated prices, according to the complaint. 
 
 Apotheker, while he was CEO, agreed in November 2011 to buy Autonomy for $10.3 billion to diversify away from hardware and expand into cloud-computing and add software that searches a broad range of data, including e-mails, music, videos and posts on social networks such as Facebook Inc. Apotheker left in 2011 after less than a year on the job following repeated strategy shifts and forecast cuts. 
 
 The writedown is another blow for the company, which is already suffering from management turmoil and slowdowns in its personal-computer, printer and technology-services businesses. 
 
 Hewlett-Packard rose 2.4 percent to close yesterday at $12.74 in New York trading. 
 
 The case is Nicolow v. Hewlett-Packard Co., 12-05980, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net
– As if losing $8.8 billion thanks to alleged accounting malfeasance at its newly acquired Autonomy Corp unit wasn't bad enough, Hewlett-Packard is now facing a lawsuit from an investor over the deal. The shareholder claims HP hid Autonomy's problems, issuing false and misleading statements, Bloomberg reports. "At the time Hewlett-Packard agreed in principle to acquire Autonomy, defendants were looking to unwind the deal in light of accounting regularities," the suit alleges. It also accuses HP of hiding negative portents for its enterprise services business. There were lots of red flags HP could have spotted before buying Autonomy, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company appears, for example, to have "sold" goods to companies by buying their customers' products in return, listing the expense in an oft-ignored corner of its balance sheet. But Autonomy founder Mike Lynch says the allegations are false, telling the New York Times it was "a bit of a shock" when HP leveled them. He says Autonomy's sales plummeted because of HP's mismanagement. "They drove out the top 100 people from Autonomy," he says. "HP salesmen got better commissions for selling our competitors' products."