HP takes $8.8bn writedown and calls on British and US authorities to investigate 'serious accounting improprieties'Hewlett-Packard has revealed that it has taken an $8.8bn (£5.5bn) charge after "serious accounting improprieties" were discovered at Autonomy, the British tech firm it acquired in 2011 for more than $10bn.The Silicon Valley giant called on the US and British authorities to investigate what it called "serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy" that occurred prior to HP's acquisition.The deal was brokered under HP's previous chief executive Leo Apotheker but finalised by current boss Meg Whitman, the former eBay chief and one time would-be governor of California.Autonomy was a one of Britain's brightest tech stars and helps firms search data across different networks, specialising in the search of "unstructured data" such as voicemail.