惠普减记谁之过？

Things got quite exciting in London at noon on Tuesday. First Kweku Adoboli, the rogue trader formerly employed by UBS, was sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud. Then Hewlett-Packardaccused the former management of Autonomy, the UK software company, of wrongdoing. The moral appeared to be, as a New York journalist wryly tweeted: “Don’t trust the British.

上周二中午，在伦敦，情况变得十分热闹有趣。首先，流氓交易员、瑞银(UBS)前员工奎库·阿多博利(Kweku Adoboli)因欺诈罪被判7年徒刑。然后是惠普(HP)指控英国软件公司Autonomy的前管理层犯下不法行为。其中隐含的意味似乎是，正如一位纽约记者在Twitter上发帖挖苦的一样：“不要信任英国人。

Hold on a minute, though. This is HP we’re talking about, a company that has a sorry record of overpaying for acquisitions and then writing off most of the value shortly afterwards. If Autonomy inflated its value in its $11bn sale to HP last year, which it firmly denies, it was bought by the world’s biggest deflater.

不过，请稍等片刻。我们谈论的是惠普，这家公司有着出高价收购、随后不久又减记大部分价值的糟糕记录。如果说在去年惠普以110亿美元收购Autonomy时，Autonomy虚报价值（该公司对此矢口否认），那么收购方就是全球最大的减记高手。

As Meg Whitman, HP’s latest chief executive, disclosed a writedown of $8.8bn on the Autonomy deal, she made it sound like a unique scandal. But three months ago, she wrote down $8bn on its $13.9bn purchase of Electronic Data Systemsin 2008. Not even that collapse matched Léo Apotheker, her predecessor, who wrote off more than the $1.2bn HP had paid for Palm in 2010.

在惠普最新一任首席执行官梅格·惠特曼(Meg Whitman)披露减记Autonomy交易88亿美元时，她使之听起来就像一桩唯一的丑闻一样。但就在3个月前，她对2008年惠普以139亿美元收购的电子数据系统公司(EDS)减记80亿美元。不过这场失利与其前任李艾科(Léo Apotheker)相比就望尘莫及了。2010年惠普收购Palm时花了12亿美元，李艾科对之减记的金额甚至超出这一收购价。

With management and accounting like that, it is surprising HP has a balance sheet left. Indeed, the EDS writedown triggered a revaluation of its other assets that contributed $3bn to the Autonomy kitchen-sinking. This cascade took $20bn of goodwill and intangibles off its assets this year – almost matching its $23bn market capitalisation.

在这样的管理层和会计操作面前，惠普竟然还拿得出资产负债表，真令人诧异。确实，由于减记EDS，惠普的其他资产被重新估值，这一因素在Autonomy减记中占了30亿美元。这一连串事件使今年惠普的资产减少了价值200亿美元的商誉和无形资产——几乎抵得上其230亿美元的市值了。

Even in a world where mergers and acquisitions are risky, and big companies struggle to make them work, this is remarkable. As any shareholder might ask – and many do – what is going on?

在这个世界上，并购总是充满风险，很多大公司难以从并购中获得好处，即便如此，惠普的情况也是极不正常的。正如很多股东可能会质问的一样——很多人已经在质问了：到底发生了什么事？

The initial temptation – one encouraged by HP – is to blame Autonomy for the debacle. But although it bears plenty of responsibility for what occurred, it isn’t the entire story. In many ways, Autonomy and HP were natural partners in an industry that is prone to wild misvaluation.

人们最初的冲动——这也是惠普鼓动的——是把这场溃败归咎于Autonomy。不过，尽管Autonomy要为此事承担大量责任，但事情并不尽然。在一个容易随意地错误估值的行业中，Autonomy和惠普在很多方面是天生的搭档。

One reason is that Silicon Valley companies, and now those from London’s Silicon Roundabout, have always lived or died by growth. Venture capitalists fund software and internet companies on the promise of rapid growth and high margins. When growth slows, as it has for HP, they have an identity crisis.

其中一个原因是，硅谷企业以及现在的伦敦“硅盘(Silicon Roundabout)企业，总是生于增长也死于增长。风险资本家为软件和互联网公司提供资金，以期从快速增长和高额利润中分一杯羹。一旦增长放缓（正如惠普一样），这些企业就有了身份危机。

The temptation, indulged by HP’s various chief executives over the past few years, is to restore it by buying high growth companies at inflated prices to tack on to mature operations. Autonomy was a classic example: Mr Apotheker paid an eye-watering premium in an effort to shift HP from hardware.

过去几年，惠普数任首席执行官沉溺于这样的诱惑中：他们试图通过以虚高的价格收购高增长企业，来补充已经成熟的业务，从而恢复高速增长。Autonomy就是一个经典案例：李艾科支付了高得离谱的溢价，以期让惠普走出对硬件业务的依赖。

It is also relatively simple to inflate the value of software companies with sharp accounting. “There is more scope for abuse because you can press a button and record a sale at almost zero cost, says Paul Morland, a technology analyst at Peel Hunt in London. “In other businesses there tends to be more involved, like making and delivering something.

运用精明的会计手段来虚增软件公司的价值也是相对简单的。伦敦Peel Hunt的技术分析师保罗·莫兰德(Paul Morland)表示：“这里存在更大的滥用空间，因为你只要按一下按钮，就能以接近零的成本记录一项交易。在其他企业，交易通常要牵涉更多方面，例如制造和交付某种产品。

Mike Lynch, Autonomy’s founder and former chief executive, insists that HP is making baseless charges and that it spoiled his business after buying it. But the tactics HP accuses Autonomy of using – for example, prematurely recognising the lifetime value of a software licence sale – have been employed by others.

Autonomy创始人、前首席执行官迈克·林奇(Mike Lynch)坚称，惠普的指控是毫无根据的，而且他的企业被惠普收购以后毁掉了。但惠普指控Autonomy采取的手段已为其他企业采用，例如将软件许可销售在整个许可期内的销售价值，提前确认。

In some extreme cases, that has led to fraud charges against those involved. Seven senior executives of Computer Associates, the US software company, were jailed in 2006 for fraud and obstructing justice after massaging their results by recording sales made in one quarter in an earlier one.

在某些极端情况下，这使卷入其中的企业受到欺诈指控。2006年，美国软件公司冠群 (Computer Associates)的7名高管因欺诈罪和妨碍司法罪被判入狱，起因是他们把一个季度的销售记入前一个季度，篡改业绩。

In other cases, companies manage to test the boundaries of accounting practice without breaching any rules. HP has handed its complaints about Autonomy’s former senior managers to the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US and the Serious Fraud Office in the UK, and those bodies will decide.

在其他情况下，企业能够打会计擦边球，而不违反规则。惠普对Autonomy前高管的指控已经提交到美国证交会(SEC)和英国严重欺诈办公室(SFO)，这两家机构将对此案作出裁决。

The mystery is why HP, and the advisers that handled the deal, did not dig deeper in the first place. It was not a secret that some analysts and investors thought Autonomy was flattering its figures. “When the deal was announced, I wrote to HP telling them they were making a big mistake, says Mr Morland. “I never got a response.

奇怪的是，惠普及负责这项收购的咨询公司当初为什么没有更加深入地调查。一些分析师和投资者认为，Autonomy在夸大数据，这不是什么秘密。莫兰德称：“这笔收购被披露时，我就向惠普写过信，告诉他们在犯重大错误。但我没有收到任何回复。

Jim Chanos, founder of Kynicos Associates, a US hedge fund, told investors in 2009 that Autonomy was hiding weaknesses in its results by buying companies and adding their revenues to its own. Autonomy “appears to have consistently overstated revenue and grossly understated expenses as part of its acquisition strategy, he wrote.

2009年，美国对冲基金Kynicos Associates创始人吉姆·查诺斯(Jim Chanos)告诉投资者，Autonomy通过收购企业，把被收购方的收入加到自己的收入中，来掩盖自身弱点。他写道，Autonomy “似乎一直夸大收入，严重低报支出，这构成其收购战略的一部分。

Yet Autonomy’s reported record of vibrant software sales and high margins made it a tempting target for HP under the growth-hungry Mr Apotheker. Mr Chanos was also critical of HP, describing it last year as “a tech roll-up whose constantly changing management team has wrecked the balance sheet.

然而，Autonomy所报告的强劲软件销售记录和高利润率，使之成为吸引惠普的收购目标——当时掌管惠普的李艾科如此渴望增长。查诺斯也抨击惠普，去年称惠普为“科技界的走马灯，管理团队反复更迭，毁掉了公司的资产负债表。

That was his view even before Ms Whitman went on the balance sheet writedown spree of the past few months. It does not encourage much faith that HP has changed its ways since she replaced Mr Apotheker. Whatever the merits of her case against Autonomy, it was a timely distraction from HP’s own operational weaknesses.

在过去几个月惠特曼疯狂减记资产之前，查诺斯就持这种观点。惠特曼取代李艾科以后，没有多少人相信惠普的风格有所转变。不管她指控Autonomy的做法有多少可取之处，至少及时地转移了人们对惠普自身经营弱点的关注。

Ms Whitman, who sat on the board of HP when it approved the purchase of Autonomy, is trying to remodel her company into something more stable and better under control. She talked to analysts last month of providing “a steady hand on the tiller and of halting HP’s tendency to keep changing strategy.

当惠普董事会批准收购Autonomy时，惠特曼正是董事之一。现在，她正在试图重塑惠普，使其更加稳定、更容易掌控。上个月她对分析人士表示，要用“一双坚定的手来掌舵，终止惠普在战略上的变幻无常。

She has used some pretty punchy accounting methods herself to write off HP’s past acquisition errors and false hopes. With those taken from the balance sheet, it needs time to rebuild. A good start would be to stop acquiring exciting-looking growth companies.

她在勾销惠普过去的收购错误和错误希望时，采用了一些相当强有力的会计手段。资产负债表上减记掉这些损失以后，需要时间来重建。停止收购表面上令人激动的增长型企业，将是一个良好的开端。