HP Acquires Control of Autonomy

HP has acquired control of Autonomy as holders of 213,421,299 Autonomy shares have accepted HP's offer to purchase the entire share capital of Autonomy at a price of almost $40 per share in cash, representing approximately 87.34 percent of the current issued share capital of Autonomy.

The acquisition positions HP as a leader in the large and growing enterprise information management space. Autonomy's software offerings power more than 25,000 customer accounts worldwide and, as part of HP, will provide high-value business solutions to help customers manage the explosion of unstructured and structured information. Autonomy offers solutions that are complementary across HP's enterprise offerings and strengthens the company's data analytics, cloud, industry, and workflow management capabilities.

"We are committed to helping our customers solve their toughest IT challenges. The exploding growth of unstructured and structured data and unlocking its value is the single largest opportunity for consumers,businesses, and governments," said Meg Whitman, HP's president and CEO. "Autonomy significantly increases our capabilities to manage and extract meaning from that data to drive insight, foresight and better decision making."

As previously announced, Autonomy will operate as a separate business unit. Mike Lynch, founder and CEO of Autonomy, will continue to lead the Autonomy business and will report to Whitman.

"This is a historic day for Autonomy, our employees and the customers we serve, as we combine HP's phenomenal assets and Autonomy's specialized skills to produce systems that handle all the information in the enterprise, regardless of the format it is in," Lynch said. "We are at the dawn of a new era when it is the I in IT that is changing, not just the T."