Lernout & Hauspie

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Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) was a Belgian company that was involved in the development of computational speech recognition from 1987 to 2001 .

L&H was founded in 1987 by Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie. After a difficult childhood, the company grew rapidly and was listed in the NASDAQ and EASDAQ in 1995 . L & H's headquarters were in Ypres , Belgium and Burlington , USA . At its peak, L&H had a market capitalizationof nearly 10 billion US dollars. Flanders played an important role in investing in society. L&H soon became the pride of Flanders. L&H bought some of its smaller competitors, including Berkeley Speech Technologies in 1996. In March and April 2000, L&H acquired Dictaphone for nearly $ 1 billion. Shortly afterwards, Dragon Systems was also bought by L&H.

For a long time there were persistent rumors about financial impropriety at L&H. In early 1999, the Wall Street Journal reported allegations by Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Smithson that L&H had falsified accounts . Further investigation by Wall Street Journal employee Jesse Eisinger led to the disclosure of a financial scandal on August 8, 2000 that involved air bookings to Korea and incorrect bookkeeping elsewhere. In April 2001 the founders of L&H, namely Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, and the former L&H board member Gastron Bastiaens were arrested. L&H went bankrupt on October 25, 2001 .

Many investors, particularly in West Flanders, have been swept along by the company's quick success, making and losing a lot of virtual money on L&H shares.