Autonomy怎样愚弄了惠普

英国软件公司Autonomy采用种种不当手段，虚报营收。以上百亿美元价格收购Autonomy没多久，惠普就不得不计提巨额减值损失。不要嘲笑惠普，这种事情有可能发生在任何一家公司身上。

2011年，惠普斥资111亿美元收购了英国软件公司Autonomy，收购溢价高达64%。Autonomy在2010年的收入接近10亿美元，而且“一直保持着两位数的收入增速，毛利润率和营业利润率分别为87%和43%”。他们是这么认为的。刚过一年，惠普就计提了88亿美元的减值损失，并称原因是Autonomy账目有误。投资者不禁要问，豪掷111亿美元之前惠普怎么会错得这么离谱？他们还想知道，究竟是什么让惠普决定计提如此巨额的减值损失。

现在我们知道了。11月中旬，美国证监会命令Autonomy美国分公司前首席执行官克里斯托弗·伊根交出他从此项收购中获得的80万美元酬劳，原因是他参与夸大了惠普作为收购依凭的数据。这笔收购案现已真相大白。虽然本案和现行国际会计准则的收入确认规则有关，但它有可能再次发生在任何一家公司身上。

有一点确实很突出，那就是在收购前的10个季度中，Autonomy的每季度收入和分析师预期的差距不到4%。这样的精准度应该引起怀疑。回头来看，极其准确地实现收入目标着实可疑。下面就是他们采用的手法：

经销商交易

Autonomy驻英国高级经理策划了一项让收入几乎虚增2亿美元的活动。该公司通过所谓的“增值”经销商销售软件。这些合法企业为终端用户提供额外服务和支持，同时销售Autonomy的软件。仅5家经销商就在30笔交易中为Autonomy提供了难称合法的服务。

如果Autonomy正在和某位终端用户洽谈生意，但无法在该季度内完成这笔交易，伊根就会在该季度最后一天或最后几天去找经销商，说这笔交易即将完成。他会以高额佣金为诱饵，劝经销商购买Autonomy的软件。随后，经销商可以把软件卖给这位终端用户，但Autonomy会继续控制这样的交易，并会在不借助经销商的情况下和终端用户谈判。这类交易绝不应该计为收入。

商品的风险、回报以及所有权都留在Autonomy手中，并没有到经销商或终端用户那里。在真正的所有权转移中，Autonomy的持续参与会达到不正常的水平。把产品卖给终端用户后，Autonomy才能获得交易带来的收益。在某些阶段，这样的交易给Autonomy的收入带来了高达15%的“增幅”。它们至关重要——有了这些交易，Autonomy披露的业绩就会在分析师的预测范围以内。

提前结款交易

从2009 年到2011年，在每个季度结束后，Autonomy财务部门最高负责人都会指导伊根和经销商提前结算采购订单；有一次这位负责人还亲自取得了这些不干净的文件。如此一来，该公司就将后一个季度的收入“拉到”刚刚结束的那个季度中，这些拉过去的收入有时刚好够Autonomy实现收入目标。在任何一家公司的账目中，将采购订单提前结款都是作假。从国际会计准则的角度看，这些交易不能带来收入，因为Autonomy并未在季度结束前将软件所有权的风险和回报转移给买家，这种转移都发生在了后一个季度。

双向交易

Autonomy必须得让经销商拿到现金，这样它们才能把虚假销售的款项付给Autonomy，同时产生一系列文件记录，从而向审计机构证明销售款已经支付。这是必需的障眼法，以免引起审计机构的怀疑。制造这种假象的手法就是和经销商进行双向交易。Autonomy从经销商那里采购各种多余的产品，经销商几乎在同时向Autonomy偿还债务。这样的双向交易由Autonomy的最高财务负责人发明，向该公司支付的虚假款项至少达到4500万美元。

在最高财务负责人授意下，伊根参与了部分双向交易。作为Autonomy和经销商之间的渠道，伊根知道，而且也应该明白，这些并非Autonomy真正的采购。他知道Autonomy并未将这些采购的成本和其他厂商的同类产品价格进行比较；他也没有就合同条款展开谈判。

这些事实说明了什么问题呢？

解决问题有多种途径

大多数不正当交易都由Autonomy的最高财务负责人操刀。这个人不在美国，也就不在美国证监会的直接控制范围以内。伊根更像是爪牙，而非主谋。他在美国执行老板的计划，在这里，至少有一位大型投资者把Autonomy的虚假财务报告作为依据。美国证监会可以找到伊根，他也帮助证监会找出了Autonomy的假账。

如果惠普不收购Autonomy，如果没有伊根的协助，这些虚假交易会浮出水面吗？很可能不会。这些虚假交易貌似真实，让感到怀疑的人无法追踪。提前结算的交易文件和没有提前结算的看上去毫无差别；经过安排，来自双向交易的资金让虚假应收账款看上去像真的一样。如果其他地方也没有引起怀疑，这些做法可能会让审计机构满意而归。

审计机构应该发现这些虚假交易吗？可能吧。如果他们调查了那些经销商交易，以确定卖给经销商的产品是否真的到了终端用户手里，审计机构或许就会进行更深入的调查。要知道，并不是所有产品都是这样。在这10个季度中，这样的交易只出现了30次。审计机构的运气得非常好，才能在这么长的时间里发现如此少量能激发其好奇心的交易。然而，如果奇怪的交易总是集中在季度结束前的几天里，他们就应该注意到并进行更深的挖掘。

这些情况都出现在国际会计准则之下。美国通用会计准则下会发生这种事吗？毫无疑问。问题并不在于准则，出问题的是参与者的意图。

会计准则不能防止虚假文件或提前结算采购订单的出现。没有哪套规则能防止想钻空子的经理人干坏事，就连新的收入确认标准也是如此。

杰克·T·切谢尔斯基是巴尔的摩资产管理和研究公司R.G.Associates总裁，该公司为机构投资者提供研究服务资讯刊物《The Analyst’s Accounting Observer》。惠普和Autonomy都不是其客户。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：詹妮

This could happen to any company.

In 2011, Hewlett-Packard paid $11.1 billion for UK software firm Autonomy – a 64% premium for a company with nearly $1 billion of 2010 revenues, and possessing “a consistent track record of double-digit revenue growth, with 87 percent gross margins and 43 percent operating margins.” So they thought. Little more than a year later, HP recorded an $8.8 billion impairment charge, citing Autonomy’s accounting improprieties as the reason. Investors wondered how could HP have gotten it so wrong before they plunked down $11.1 billion in cash? And they wondered what HP uncovered that led to the writedown.

Now we know. In mid-November, the SEC ordered the former CEO of Autonomy’s U.S. operations, Christopher Egan, to fork over $800,000 of compensation resulting from the takeover, in which HP relied on figures he had helped inflate. The facts of the case are now public. Although this case related to current IFRS revenue recognition rules, it can happen again, and to any company.

One fact really stands out: in each of the 10 quarters preceding the acquisition, Autonomy’s revenues were within 4% of analyst expectations. That’s a level of precision that should arouse suspicion. In hindsight, achieving revenue targets like clockwork looks awfully strange. Here’s how they did it.

Reseller transactions

Autonomy’s UK-based senior managers directed a program swelling revenues by almost $200 million. Autonomy sold its software through “value-added” resellers, legitimate businesses providing additional services and support to product end users while also selling Autonomy’s software. Just five resellers, in 30 transactions, provided services to Autonomy that couldn’t be called legitimate.

When Autonomy was negotiating a sale to an end user, but couldn’t close the sale by quarter’s end, Egan would approach the resellers on or near the last day of the quarter, saying the deal was nearly done. Egan coaxed the resellers to buy Autonomy software by paying them hefty commissions. The resellers could then sell the software to a specified end user – but Autonomy maintained control of the deals and handled negotiations with the end user without the resellers’ aid. There’s no way these transactions could be revenue.

Autonomy retained risks, rewards and ownership of the goods – not the resellers, and not the end users. Autonomy was still exercising continuing involvement to an abnormal degree for a real transfer of ownership to occur. And the benefits of the deals didn’t accrue to Autonomy until they were sold to an end user. These transactions “grew” Autonomy’s revenues by as much as 15% in some periods. They were critical: they enabled the firm to report financial results within the boundaries of analyst expectations.

Backdated transactions

Between 2009 and 2011, after a quarter’s close, Autonomy’s most senior finance executive directed Egan to procure backdated purchase orders from resellers; once, the executive obtained the dirty documentation personally. This resulted in revenue “pulled” from a later quarter into the one just closed – sometimes just enough revenue to let Autonomy hit its revenue target. In anyone’s book, backdating purchase orders is a falsification of facts. Viewed through an IFRS accounting lens, these transactions couldn’t be called revenues because Autonomy didn’t transfer the risk and rewards of software ownership to the buyer, at quarter end. That happened in a later quarter.

Round-trip transactions

Autonomy needed to get cash to the resellers so they could pay Autonomy for the sham sales, creating a paper trail for the auditors demonstrating payments on the sales – a necessary optic, to avoid arousing their suspicions. The illusion was created with round-trip reseller transactions. Autonomy purchased various surplus products from the resellers, with nearly simultaneous payment by the reseller back to Autonomy on debt owed to them. The round-trip transactions were improvised by Autonomy’s senior-most finance executive, and they amounted to at least $45 million of phony paybacks to Autonomy.

On the orders of the most senior financial executive, Egan was involved in some round-trip transactions: he served as the conduit between Autonomy and the resellers, and knew, or should have known, that they didn’t represent genuine purchases by Autonomy. He knew Autonomy did not price the cost of such purchases with other vendors of the same products; he didn’t negotiate agreement terms.

What to make of these facts?

There’s more than one way to skin a cat

Often, the most senior financial executive of Autonomy developed most of the illicit transactions; and being out the country, was not directly within the SEC’s reach. Egan was more of a pawn than a mastermind, and carried out his boss’s plans – inside the United States, where at least one gigantic investor relied on the doctored financial statements. Egan was reachable by the SEC, and he provided them with assistance in ferreting out the falsifications.

Would the sham transactions have been uncovered without HP buying Autonomy – and without Egan’s assistance? It probably wouldn’t have been uncovered. The bogus transactions were designed to look real and throw suspicious parties off the trail. Backdated documents don’t look different from ones that aren’t backdated; the cash paid from the round-trip transactions was arranged to make dummy receivables look real. That would likely satisfy auditors, if their suspicions were unaroused otherwise.

Should the Autonomy auditors have caught the fake transactions? Possibly. Had they investigated the reseller transactions to see if the initial sales to resellers resulted in sales to end users – not all of them did, remember – they might have probed further. There were only 30 such transactions over a 10-quarter period: the auditors would have been awfully lucky to find transactions that piqued their curiosity out of such a small population and over such a long time frame. If odd transactions always showed in the last few days leading up to the quarter end, however, they should have noticed – and dug further.

This occurred under IFRS rules. Could it have happened under GAAP? No doubt. The problem here isn’t with the standards: the problem is the intent of the players involved.

Accounting standards can’t prevent the creation of false documents or backdated purchase orders. No set of rules, not even the new revenue recognition standard, can prevent mischief by managers expected to play by the rules.

Jack T. Ciesielski is president of R.G. Associates, Inc., an asset management and research firm in Baltimore that publishes The Analyst’s Accounting Observer, a research service for institutional investors. Neither Hewlett Packard nor Autonomy are clients of R.G. Associates Inc.