Hewlett-Packard unveils details of $5bn Autonomy fraud case

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/05/hewlett-packard-unveils-details-of-5bn-autonomy-case

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financial-crime/11583498/HP-claims-Mike-Lynch-sacked-Autonomy-finance-boss-to-silence-concern-over-sales.html

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/35db8c1e-ef2d-11e4-87dc-00144feab7de.html#axzz3ZKz9hlwC

HP’s lawyers have outlined five main sources of allegedly wrongly claimed income:

  • $194m of supposedly hidden hardware sales. HP said it found Autonomy resold hardware such as servers made by other companies, often at a loss, and claims its directors allowed investors to believe this was software revenue.
  • $196m in apparently wrongly reported sales of Autonomy’s core software product, IDOL, to other software companies.
  • $205m in supposedly questionable transactions with software resellers.
  • $80m of claimed incorrectly reported hosting deals, in which Autonomy renegotiated contracts to host other companies’ data on its own servers
  • $33m in other alleged improper transactions.

Hewlett-Packard unveils details of $5bn Autonomy fraud case

US firm claims Mike Lynch inflated revenues by $700m, but Autonomy founder says HP has failed to produce ‘smoking gun’

Of particular interest to Hewlett-Packard are 37 deals with small IT contractors that bought Autonomy’s software. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters

Juliette Garside

Tuesday 5 May 2015 19.54 BSTLast modified on Wednesday 6 May 201500.10 BST

Hewlett-Packard has unveiled full details of its $5bn (£3.3bn) fraud case against the founder of the UK software company Autonomy, claiming that Mike Lynch inflated the revenues of his business by about $700m over a two-and-a-half-year period.

HP, which bought Autonomy in 2011 for $11bn, has filed a claim against Lynch and his finance director, Sushovan Hussain, in the high court in London, alleging they engaged in improper transactions with software resellers and in questionable accounting practices. Continue reading

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The strange case of Ashazi: Wirecard in Bahrain, via Singapore

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/05/05/2127886/the-strange-case-of-ashazi-wirecard-in-bahrain-via-singapore/

The strange case of Ashazi: Wirecard in Bahrain, via Singapore

Dan McCrum

| May 05 10:10 | 2 comments | Share

Ashazi Services, a Bahrain-based electronic payments company, moved from place to place in the Gulf Kingdom. For a time it was based in managed office space in one of the gleaming towers of Manama’s prestigious diplomatic area, but also small apartments far from the centre.

In early 2011, however, Ashazi’s address was the office of its lawyer, Kumail Al Alawi, found above a side alley tucked between an outpost of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a car rental office.

So what sort of company was it? The question matters because in 2011 the Bahrain start-up was responsible for €4m per year of licence fee revenues reported by Wirecard, the German listed payments company. Ashazi Services Co WLL is one of the dormant companies leading back to E-Credit Plus Singapore, the first business purchased in Wirecard’s long Asian acquisition spree. Continue reading

Ire-Tex Corp Bhd auditors give qualified opinion due to impairment of related-party receivables and advances

http://www.thestar.com.my/Business/Business-News/2015/05/06/IreTex-auditors-give-qualified-opinion/?style=biz

Ire-Tex auditors give qualified opinion

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

By: WONG WEI-SHEN

UPETALING JAYA: The external auditors of Ire-Tex Corp Bhd have expressed a qualified opinion on the company’s financial statements for the year ended Dec 31, 2014. The light-emitting diode (LED) manufacturer’s auditors UHY said the basis for its qualified opinion was due to trade receivables from sales, which were subsequently impaired as of Ire-Tex’s financial year end.

During the year, UHY noted that Ire-Tex’s unit Zoomic Automation (M) Sdn Bhd sold goods to two related parties amounting to RM5mil. The trade receivables amounting to RM5mil and advances of RM800,000 were subsequently impaired by the management as of financial year end.

“Due to insufficient appropriate audit evidence, we are unable to satisfy ourselves as to the validity and existence of these sales and whether there were other consequential adjustments to be made to the accompanying financial statements including cost of sales and gross profit,” said UHY in a statement. Continue reading

Origins of Chinese Bond Default Buried in Accounting Footnotes

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-05/origins-of-kaisa-default-in-china-sought-in-accounting-footnotes-i9bv09mr

Origins of Chinese Bond Default Buried in Accounting Footnotes

byLisa PhamMichelle YunLianting Tu

May 6, 2015

Investors still wondering how Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. doubled its debt in six months and triggered China’s first property bond default may want to read page 63 of its 2014 interim report.

There, in footnote No. 15 of the Shenzhen-based company’s balance sheet, is a reference to 11 billion yuan ($1.8 billion) in advance deposits for property projects from third parties and for 1.15 billion yuan that needed to be refunded.

At issue is whether these deposits were initially classified properly as current liabilities on Kaisa’s books. Analysts at Lucror Analytics Pte, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities HK Ltd. and BDO Ltd. say the payments have characteristics of interest-bearing debt, and booking them the way Kaisa did may have made metrics that investors use to assess a company’s riskiness appear stronger than they actually were. Continue reading