The estate of tech tycoon Mike Lynch – who died last year when his yacht sank – and his business partner owe tech giant Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) £700m, the High Court has ruled.
HPE bought Lynch’s tech firm Autonomy in 2011, but it says Lynch and Autonomy’s former chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, misrepresented the company’s finances.
The court ruled that HPE had paid more than it would have done “had Autonomy’s true financial position been correctly presented” during the sale.
A spokesperson said Lynch had prepared a statement on the ruling last year, calling HP’s initial claim for up to $5bn (£3.7bn) a “wild overstatement”.
Lynch and his teenage daughter Hannah were among seven passengers and crew who died when the Bayesian went down off the coast of Sicily last August during a storm which caused the vessel to capsize and sink.
Tuesday’s ruling was delayed because of the tragedy.
The judge expressed his “sorrow at this devastating turn of events, and my sympathy and deepest condolences”, adding that he “admired” Lynch despite ruling against him.
In response to the ruling, HPE said it looked forward to “the further hearing at which the final amount of HPE’s damages will be determined”.
The US technology giant had accused Lynch and Hussain of fraudulently inflating the value of Autonomy, which HP bought for $11.1bn in 2011 – worth £7.1bn at the time.
Just over a year after it acquired the business, HPE announced it was writing down the value of Autonomy by $8.8bn because it had found “serious accounting improprieties”.
The two men denied the claim. Lynch said HPE had “botched the purchase of Autonomy and destroyed the company”.
In a ruling in 2022, Mr Justice Hildyard said HPE had “substantially succeeded” in its claim, but that it was likely to receive “substantially less” than the $5bn it sought in damages.
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