Hewlett Packard boss defends Lynch family prosecution in £3bn fraud case after tycoon’s death

The boss of Hewlett Packard Enterprises has responded after his company was accused of a “total lack of humility” for suing Mike Lynch’s family following his death.

Antonio Neri, chief executive of the US software group, said it was a “difficult” decision to continue with the £3bn fraud case against the British tycoon’s estate.

But he stressed that the move was “in the best interests of shareholders”.

Lynch, 59, and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among seven people who died when the superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily last month.

The family celebrated Lynch’s acquittal in the US fraud case surrounding the £8 billion takeover of his technology company Autonomy by Hewlett Packard in 2011.

Hewlett Packard Enterprises’ (HPE) decision to take separate legal action against Lynch’s estate following his death has sparked outrage.

Patrick Jacob, a close friend of the entrepreneur, last week accused HPE of first “pursuing a man through a relentless press war” and now going after his widow, Angela Bacares, 57, who survived the case.

“Even before the bodies are laid to rest, they are circling like vultures, which shows a total lack of humanity,” Jacob said last week.

“This is downright heartless and tasteless.”

But Neri, 57, said in an interview with the Financial Times yesterday that Lynch’s acquittal and subsequent death did not change HPE’s plan to file a separate civil claim over the acquisition.

He said: ‘As a representative of the shareholders, it is of course my job to make the difficult decisions.

‘But ultimately we make decisions in the best interests of shareholders.

“What we saw is a sad story. But the reality of what happened doesn’t change what happened over the last decade or so, where we believe something was done wrong, and so we have to look through the process.”

Although Lynch was acquitted of U.S. criminal charges over the sale of Autonomy in June, HPE won a civil lawsuit in the Supreme Court in 2022.

A judge is expected to award damages by the end of this year.

Friends of the late businessman Lynch, including Conservative MP Sir David Davis, have called on HPE to drop the claim.

Sir David said last month: ‘I think it would be wise for Hewlett-Packard to drop the case in their own interests. They’re not going to make a lot of money from it, but they’re making themselves very unpopular with the public by targeting a survivor.’

HPE, a hardware and services company, spun off from computer and printer manufacturer HP Inc. in 2015.

This week it was reported that an elite Italian Navy unit sent divers and robots to the wreck of Lynch’s yacht, the Bayesian, which now lies more than 50 metres beneath the waters around Porticello, Sicily, after sinking on 19 August.

Investigators have raised questions about how the £30 million ship, which was more than 180ft long, sank so quickly that seven of the 22 people on board died.

In an attempt to answer these questions, the Italian navy is sending six divers from its elite unit Comsubin, the equivalent of Britain’s Special Boat Service, to the Times.

The elite divers will search for electronic equipment, including CCTV and data storage, and see if any doors were left open when the ship sank.

The trip that ended in tragedy was part of Lynch’s celebrations with family and friends after he was acquitted of fraud and conspiracy charges by a San Francisco court earlier this year.

Lynch could potentially face up to 20 years in prison in the US if convicted of 16 counts of conspiracy and securities and wire fraud, which he denied.

The charges related to a business deal seen at the time as his crowning achievement: the sale of his software and data business Autonomy to US computer giant Hewlett-Packard in 2011, worth £8.6bn.

Mr Lynch personally made more than £500m from the deal, but HP wrote off three-quarters of Autonomy’s value a year after the purchase.

The US company fired Lynch, accusing him and other executives of vastly inflating the company’s size and profits during the sale.

He had previously lost a civil fraud case in 2019, based on similar allegations brought by HP – now Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) – in the UK. The High Court in London ruled in 2020 that HPE had “substantially won” the case.

His three-year battle to avoid extradition and criminal prosecution led Lynch to go to the High Court to argue that US prosecutors had committed legal overreach that threatened British sovereignty and its citizens.

His request was denied and in May of last year he was flown to California with the US Marshals Service, still pleading his innocence.

And on June 6 of this year, he was acquitted of fraud by a jury in San Francisco, while former Autonomy CFO Stephen Chamberlain, who faced the same charges, was also acquitted of all charges.

In his first hearing after the charges were dismissed, Lynch spoke of his fears that he would die in prison. He said that due to medical problems, he felt it would be “difficult to survive” in prison.

Mr Lynch and his wife are believed to have lived in their Georgian country house in Suffolk for the past 15 years, which includes a 160-acre farm and woodland, in addition to 6,000 acres of mainly arable land.