Bangalore: Hewlett-Packard stunned the Wall Street when it alleged Autonomy, its subsidiary in UK, for a massive accounting scandal of $8.8 billion write-down, reports Reuters.

HP on Tuesday said it discovered “serious accounting improprieties" and "a willful effort by Autonomy to mislead shareholders," through an investigation, after a whistleblower exposed the irregularities with Autonomy following the ouster of HP’s former CEO Mike Lynch in May.   

The news resulted in a 10 year low of HP share value which stood at $11.71, and also marred the company’s reputation which for decades was synonymous with technical excellence and innovation as one of the bedrock companies of Silicon Valley. The company now has a market value of roughly $20 billion, down from $155 billion in April of 2000.

HP was in tumult over the leadership; Meg Whitman took the helm of HP as CEO succeeding Leo Apotheker, who got fired after less than a year on the job. His one big strategic move during his brief tenure was the $11 billion acquisition of Autonomy, intended to hasten HP's transformation into software and services Company which attracted criticism by analysts for being over-priced. And this announcement came just three months after the company took a write-down of almost $11 billion on its EDS (another subsidiary of HP) services division.

"Most of the board was here and voted for this deal, and we feel terribly about that," Whitman said on a call with analysts on acquiring Autonomy.

HP over the recent years followed the strategy of acquiring businesses ranging from EDS to Compaq to Palm, however failed to achieve growth in businesses like computer services or mobile computing.