The former CFO of Autonomy paid £77m to Hewlett Packard companies to settle a lawsuit over the $11.1bn sale of the Cambridge business to the US tech giant in 2011.
Sushovan Hussain spent three and a half years in a US prison after being found guilty of fraud over the deal.
Now US stock exchange filings have revealed the extent of the payment he made earlier this year to end HP’s 10-year pursuit for compensation. There was no admission of wrongdoing in the settlement.
The sum was paid by Hussain – who has returned to the UK and set up a startup to help rehabilitated criminals return to work – weeks before a High Court judge ruled in July that he and the estate of Mike Lynch, the founder and former CEO of Autonomy, together owe the US tech giant over £700m.
Half of the settlement money was paid to Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the other half to HP Inc. The two arms of the business, focused on data centres and retail respectively, were created in a 2015 split.
Tech magnate Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among seven people killed in August 2024 when his luxury yacht Bayesian was caught up in a waterspout – a tornado formed over water – while anchored off the coast of Sicily. It sank quickly.
His widow Angela 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 sale of Autonomy.
HPE had initially sought compensation of almost $4bn. Within months of its acquisition of Autonomy, it wrote down its value by $8.8bn and accused Autonomy’s management of falsely inflating its value.
Lynch’s estate will now be responsible for the vast majority of the damages, it is reported, which will likely bankrupt it. Its net worth had been estimated at $450m in US legal proceedings.
The estate is being managed by Jeremy Sandelson, a former Clifford Chance lawyer. He may appeal the ruling. A hearing will be held in November.
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