Autonomy's Mike Lynch loses £70m in a morning

The fall knocked over £350m off the value of the company in one fell swoop, which has already seen its valuation fall by 90 per cent since it moved on to the London Stock Exchange in November. CEO Mike Lynch will have lost £70m of personal wealth in this morning's fall.

Investors are increasingly nervous about Autonomy's future, partly because of its previous status as a Nasdaq stock darling - once commanding valuations putting it in the same league as Microsoft and Oracle.

Worryingly for other European tech firms, Autonomy blamed the profits warning on a slowdown in Europe as well as the US. CEO Lynch said in a statement that European customers had become reticent to place large software orders. However, he maintained the long-term outlook for the company is good, with orders being delayed rather than cancelled.

He described the short-term outlook as "obscured". Co-founder Richard Gaunt was quoted on Reuters saying it was impossible to say where or whether the market would pick up.