Steer congratulates Buxton on Autonomy

Schroders' Richard Buxton has revealed he was congratulated by Artemis' Tim Steer for holding tech firm Autonomy as it received a bid approach - a time when Steer was shorting the stock.

Buxton said although performance on his £2.8bn UK Alpha Plus fund was impacted by exposure to financials and cyclicals over the past few months, Hewlett Packard's bid for Autonomy in mid-August offset some of the losses. The US technology giant offered to pay a premium of about 75% for the firm in a £7.1bn offer valuing shares at £25.50 each. On 19 August, when the bid approach came to light, the tech group saw its shares jump 77%. Buxton told clients: "We received an email from a unitholder as I badgered on about this persistently and did not allow myself to get a twitch from Tim Ste...