HP completes £7.1bn Autonomy acquisition

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has completed its acquisition of UK software company, Autonomy.

HP announced plans to buy Autonomy for £7.1bn in August 2011 as part of a major shake-up.

HP said the acquisition positioned it as a leader in the large and growing enterprise information management space.

"Autonomy offers solutions that are complementary across HP's enterprise offerings and strengthens the company's data analytics, cloud, industry and workflow management capabilities," said the company.

Former CEO Leo Apotheker was sacked from HP after he announced HP was to sell its market-leading PC business, offload its TouchPad tablet range and buy Autonomy.

Apotheker has walked away from the company with a $13.2m (£8.4m) pay-off, including a $2.4m additional bonus despite HP's share price plummeting under his 11-month stewardship. HP named former eBay chief, Meg Whitman, as Apotheker's replacement.

HP CEO Meg Whitman said the Autonomy acquisition increased HP's capability to manage and extract meaning from the exploding growth of unstructured and structured data, to help companies make better decisions.

Autonomy will continue to operate as a separate business unit. Mike Lynch, founder and CEO at Autonomy, will report to Whitman.

Lynch added: "We are at the dawn of a new era when it is the 'I' in IT that is changing, not just the 'T.'"

• Read Computer Weekly's analysis on what HP's acquisition of Autonomy means for the UK tech sector >>

• Sign-up to Computer Weekly to download our special report on HP >>