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DealBook|Mike Lynch’s Estate Ordered to Pay Hewlett Packard $945 Million
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/business/dealbook/mike-lynch-hp.html
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The technology giant had accused the British mogul, who died last year when his yacht sank, of fraud in the sale of his company in 2011.
July 22, 2025, 9:27 a.m. ET
The estate of Mike Lynch, the British technology executive who died when his yacht sank off the Italian coast last summer, and his former business partner owe Hewlett Packard Enterprise more than 700 million pounds ($945 million) over the 2011 sale of his company to Hewlett-Packard, a London judge ruled on Tuesday.
The decision, which had been delayed several months after the death of Mr. Lynch, was a long-awaited development in the legal fight over Autonomy, the software company he sold to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. Hewlett-Packard later accused Mr. Lynch and others of fraudulently inflating the company’s value.
The amount was far less than the $4 billion sought by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a successor company to Hewlett-Packard. “I consider that HP’s claim was always substantially exaggerated,” the presiding judge, Robert Hildyard, wrote in the decision.
But the judgment is more than the current value of the Lynch estate, which The Times of London recently appraised at about £473 million. The estate is on the hook for a majority of the damages owed to Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The judgment was the latest twist in Mr. Lynch’s story. He had been heralded as Britain’s answer to Bill Gates after the Autonomy sale, but soon after that deal Hewlett-Packard accused top Autonomy executives, including Mr. Lynch, of lying about the state of the business, and wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8 billion.
In 2015, Hewlett-Packard accused the British executive and the company’s former chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, of fraud and sued them in a London court. Both men denied the allegations.
