Hewlett-Packard Co.'s former finance chief said she thoughtshe'd be fired when she spoke out against the Autonomy deal at aboard meeting on the eve of the $11 billion acquisition.

Cathie Lesjak, who worked at the company for more than 30 years,decided in the early hours of the morning before a crucial boardvote to object to the transaction—and fully expected to be fired byCEO Leo Apotheker as a result. On her first day of evidence in the$5.1 billion fraud trial against several former Autonomy managers,Lesjak said she'd believed the 60 percent premium on offer was fartoo high.

“I thought it was a sure thing that I would be fired,” Lesjaksaid Monday in the London trial. “I knew I had to speak up.”

Apotheker, who pitched the software acquisition as a way ofpivoting the computing giant away from its struggling PC business,testified in April that he felt “blindsided” when Lesjak spoke upin August 2011. After the meeting, Apotheker told her she would befired, Lesjak said.

In his evidence, Apotheker said he didn't mind dissent and wouldhave postponed the deal if the board had wanted to do so. But inprivate, a flurry of emails were being sent as the directors heldtheir discussions.

During the meeting, Lesjak sent an email to Chairman RaymondLane that described Apotheker as “a dead man walking.” “There is nofinancial discipline,” she said, and HP had “no real plan.”

When questioned whether it was appropriate to send the messages,Lesjak replied: “I wanted him to know what was really goingon.”

Apotheker was fired in September 2011, shortly before theAutonomy deal was completed, while Lesjak remained at the firmuntil February this year. She was speaking at the midway point ofthe trial where Autonomy founder Mike Lynch is accused ofoverseeing a massive fraud that led HP into overpaying for hiscompany. A key issue of the case has been the level of duediligence that HP conducted and the extent to which HP knew what itwas buying.

Lesjak said she couldn't remember discussing a series of slidesprepared by auditor EY in November 2011 that laid out how Autonomy,once the U.K.'s second-largest software company, was also sellinghardware. In one email, she signed off, saying the decks lookedgood.

Copyright 2019 Bloomberg. All rightsreserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,or redistributed.