Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, one among six folks lacking from a sunken yacht off Sicily, had been making an attempt to maneuver previous a Silicon Valley debacle that had tarnished his legacy as an icon of British ingenuity.
Lynch, 59, struck gold when he offered Autonomy, a software program maker he based in 1996, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. However the deal shortly changed into an albatross for him after he was accused of cooking the books to make the sale and fired by HP’s then-CEO Meg Whitman.
He was cleared of prison costs within the U.S. in June, however nonetheless confronted a doubtlessly big invoice stemming from a civil case in London.
A decade-long authorized battle had resulted in his extradition from the U.Okay. to face prison costs of engineering a large fraud in opposition to HP, an organization that helped form Silicon Valley’s zeitgeist after beginning in a Palo Alto, California, storage in 1939.
Lynch steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, asserting that he was being made a scapegoat for HP’s personal bungling — a place he maintained whereas testifying earlier than a jury throughout a 2 1/2 month trial in San Francisco earlier this yr. U.S. Justice Division prosecutors known as greater than 30 witnesses in an try and show allegations that Lynch engaged in accounting duplicity that bilked billions of {dollars} from HP.
The trial ended up vindicating Lynch and he pledged to return to the U.Okay. and discover new methods to innovate.
Though he averted a potential jail sentence, Lynch nonetheless confronted the civil case in London that HP largely received throughout 2022. Damages haven’t been decided in that case, however HP is searching for $4 billion. Lynch made greater than $800 million from the Autonomy sale.
Earlier than changing into entangled with HP, Lynch was broadly hailed as a visionary who impressed descriptions casting him because the British model of Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Lynch, a Cambridge-educated mathematician, made his mark working Autonomy, which made a search engine that might pore by means of emails and different inner enterprise paperwork to assist corporations discover important data extra shortly. Autonomy’s regular development throughout its first decade resulted in Lynch being awarded one of many U.Okay’s highest honors, the Workplace of the Most Glorious Order of the British Empire in 2006.
Within the months main as much as the deal that might go awry, HP valued Autonomy at $46 billion, in response to proof offered at Lynch’s trial.
The trial additionally offered contrasting portraits of Lynch. Prosecutors painted him as an iron-fisted boss obsessive about hitting income targets, even when it meant resorting to duplicity. However his attorneys solid him as entrepreneur with integrity and a prototypical tech nerd who loved consuming chilly pizza late at evening whereas pondering new methods to innovate.
