Hewlett Packard Enterprise has said it will follow through on its potential £3 billion legal claim against Mike Lynch’s widow Angela Bacares.
The tech magnate and their 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among seven people killed when Lynch’s luxury yacht Bayesian was caught up in a waterspout – a tornado formed over water – while anchored off the coast of Sicily and sank quickly.
Bacares was among 15 people rescued in the disaster, while the bodies of her husband and daughter were recovered from the wreckage on the sea bed days later.
They were celebrating Lynch’s recent acquittal on 15 counts of fraud – avoiding a potential 20 years behind bars – in a San Francisco trial over the 2011 sale of Cambridge firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11.1 billion.
Lynch founded Autonomy in Cambridge in 1996. Its software was designed to extract information from unstructured communications including phone calls, emails and video.
US prosecutors had accused him of inflating its value using backdated sales agreements, hiding its loss-making hardware resale business and intimidating – or paying off – those who spoke out about the practices.
However the jury did not agree with them that Lynch was the “driving force” behind the accounting improprieties.
The former UK government adviser – who also sat on the boards of the BBC and the British Library – was accused of inflating sales and misleading regulators as well as HP, which wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8bn soon after the deal went through.
He was extradited to the United States and effectively placed under house arrest while the trial ran its course.
Stephen Chamberlain, former VP of finance at Lynch’s former firm Autonomy, was cleared of the same charges. He died two days before the Bayesian tragedy after he was struck by a car in Cambridgeshire.
In 2022, following a six-year civil case, British High Court judge Mr Justice Hildyard ruled that Lynch and his former finance chief Sushovan Hussain had defrauded HP. Subsequently HPE – HP’s data centre business, which split from the retail arm of the business in 2015 – filed documents earlier this year seeking $4bn (£3bn) in damages.
Before the disaster, Lynch had said he intended to appeal the ruling. Hussain was found guilty of fraud in 2018 and later sentenced to five years in prison.
HPE said in a statement: “In 2022, an English High Court judge ruled that HPE had substantially succeeded in its civil fraud claims against Dr Lynch and Mr Hussain.
“A damages hearing was held in February 2024 and the judge’s decision regarding damages due to HPE will arrive in due course. It is HPE’s intention to follow the proceedings through to their conclusion.”
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