British tech tycoon Mike Lynch was trying to bounce back from HP fraud case before being lost at sea
Tech magnate Mike Lynch, one of six people missing from a sunken yacht off the coast of Sicily, he tried to recover from the Silicon Valley disaster that had tarnished his reputation as an icon of British ingenuity.
Lynch, 59, struck gold when he sold Autonomy, a software maker he founded in 1996, to Hewlett-Packard for 11 billion dollars in 2011But the deal quickly turned into a albatross for him after he was accused of falsifying the books to promote sales.
The fraud allegations resulted in Lynch’s firing by HP’s then-CEO Meg Whitman and a decade-long legal battle, culminating in his extradition from the United Kingdom to face criminal charges of orchestrating a massive fraud against a company that shaped the Silicon Valley zeitgeist after it began operations in a Palo Alto, California, garage in 1939.
Lynch has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and claimed he was being made a scapegoat for HP’s own blunders — a position he maintained when he testified before a jury earlier this year during a 2 1/2-month trial in San Francisco. Justice Department prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses in an attempt to prove allegations that Lynch engaged in accounting duplicity that stole billions of dollars from HP.
The trial ultimately resulted in Lynch being vindicated, was acquitted of all charges in June. Lynch, who had been free on $100 million bail during the trial, had promised to return to the United Kingdom and explore new ways to innovate.
Though he avoided possible prison time, Lynch still faced a potentially massive bill stemming from a civil case in London that HP largely won in 2022. Damages in that case have not yet been determined, but HP is seeking $4 billion. Lynch made more than $800 million from the sale of Autonomy.
Before joining HP, Lynch was widely hailed as a visionary, with many calling him the British version of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Apple founder Steve Jobs.
Lynch, a Cambridge-educated mathematician, made his name with Autonomy, a search engine that could sift through emails and other internal corporate documents to help companies find important information more quickly. Autonomy’s steady growth over its first decade resulted in Lynch being awarded one of the United Kingdom’s highest honors, the Office of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, in 2006.
In the months leading up to the failed deal, HP valued Autonomy at $46 billion, according to evidence presented at Lynch’s trial.
The process is also presented contrasting portraits Lynch. Prosecutors portrayed him as a tough-minded boss obsessed with hitting revenue targets, even when it meant being dishonest. But his own lawyers portrayed him as an entrepreneur with integrity and a prototypical techie who enjoyed eating cold pizza late at night while thinking of new ways to innovate.