Hewlett-Packard Co plans as soon as Thursday to announce a $10 billion acquisition of British software company Autonomy and a spinoff of its personal computer business, the world's largest, Bloomberg reported.

HP could make the announcement on the same day it is due to release quarterly earnings, Bloomberg said, citing sources familiar with the company's plans.

HP has denied past speculation that it was in discussions to sell or spin off its PC arm, one of its largest divisions but also among the least profitable.

Cambridge-based Autonomy counts Procter & Gamble Co among a long list of major corporate customers that use its software to search and organize unstructured data like emails

Shares of the HP were down 2.9 percent at $30.48 at midday.

(Reporting by Edwin Chan and Poornima Gupta; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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