While Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ, Fortune 500) deal to buy software company Autonomy was signed in 2011, it took until 2012 to reveal just how truly awful the deal was. In late November, HP announced that it was writing off $9 billion of the $11 billion it paid for the company. About half of that write-off was due to accounting irregularities at Autonomy that HP says it didn't know about before the deal. Others say they should have been obvious.
A number of analysts have dubbed the deal worse than the AOL-Time Warner merger, which has long held the title as worst deal of all time. On behalf of my employer, Time Warner, I want to say, "Thank you, HP. Thank you."
Management changes, backpedaling, and a new sales contender. Some automakers had a great 2012, and some would like to move on to 2013.
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