Mike Lynch, 59, is the founder of enterprise software company Autonomy. He was acquitted of fraud charges in June after defending himself in a trial over allegations he artificially inflated the value of Autonomy in an $11.7 billion sale to tech giant Hewlett Packard.
Chris Ratcliff | Bloomberg | Getty Images
LONDON — British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch was acquitted of fraud charges in June in a landmark trial over allegations made by Hewlett Packard that he had artificially inflated the value of his company when he sold it to the US tech giant for $11.7 billion in 2011.
Just two months after his acquittal, Leeds – once hailed by the UK national press as “Britain’s Bill Gates” – was reported missing on Monday after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily.
The yacht, named Bayesian, capsized around 4 a.m. local time while anchored off the coast of Porticello, a small fishing village located in the province of Palermo in Italy. It was hit by an unexpectedly severe storm, according to local media reports.
Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, is among 15 people rescued after the yacht capsized. At least one man has died, while six people – including Lynch’s daughter, Hannah – remain unaccounted for, officials said.
Sicily’s civil protection agency told reporters late Monday that Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Blumer, his wife Judy, Clifford Chance’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda were also missing as difficult search and rescue efforts began again on Tuesday.
In a separate incident on Saturday, Stephen Chamberlain, a former vice president of finance at Autonomy and a co-defendant in Lynch’s trial, died after being “fatally struck” by a car while jogging in Cambridgeshire, England, Chamberlain’s lawyer said. he told Reuters news agency.
Who is Mike Lynch?
Lynch, 59, is the founder of enterprise software company Autonomy. He also runs Invoke Capital, a venture capital firm focused on backing European technology start-ups, which he founded in 2012.
Lynch was extradited from Britain to the US last year to stand trial over the HP allegations. He faced criminal charges including fraud and conspiracy for allegedly conspiring to inflate Autonomy’s revenue from 2009 in an attempt to lure a buyer.
But two months ago, Lynch, who has long denied the allegations, was acquitted of fraud charges in a surprise victory after a three-month trial.
During the trial, Lynch took the stand in his own defense, denying wrongdoing and telling jurors that HP crippled Autonomy’s integration.
Prosecutors had alleged that Lynch, along with Autonomy’s now-deceased chief financial officer, Chamberlain, paid off Autonomy’s finances in various ways.
These included back-dated agreements and so-called round-trip agreements that attempted to artificially inflate Autonomy’s sales by pushing cash to customers through bogus contracts.
Lynch told jurors he had focused on technology-related matters at Autonomy and left accounting and financial decisions to the company’s then-CFO, Sushovan Hussain.
Hussain was separately convicted in the US in 2018 on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud related to the HP deal. He was released from prison in January after serving a five-year sentence.
“Bill Gates of Britain”
Lynch was born in Ilford, a large town in East London, in 1965 and grew up near Chelmsford in the English county of Essex.
He attended the University of Cambridge, where he studied natural sciences, focusing on areas such as electronics, mathematics and biology. After completing his undergraduate studies, Lynch completed his Ph.D. in signal processing and communications.
In the late 1980s, Lynch founded Lynett Systems Ltd., a company that produced audio designs and products for the music industry.
A few years later, in the early 1990s, he set up a fingerprint recognition business called Cambridge Neurodynamics, which counted South Yorkshire Police among its clients.
But his big break came in 1996 with Autonomy, which he co-founded with David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt as a spinoff from Cambridge Neurodynamics. The company has grown into one of Britain’s largest technology companies.
Lynch was highly influential in the UK tech scene at the height of his success, having once been dubbed Britain’s Bill Gates by the media.
He was previously a member of the board of directors of the British television station BBC. He also once served as an adviser to the British government on the Science and Technology Council.
In his role as head of venture firm Invoke, Lynch was closely involved in helping the UK cybersecurity firm Darktrace and legal software startup Luminance launch, backing both companies with substantial amounts of money.
Publicly traded Darktrace, which had fended off similar revenue-inflating allegations from US short seller Quintessential Capital Management, earlier this year agreed to be acquired and taken private by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $5.32 billion dollars in cash.
Leeds previously did the The Forbes Billionaires List in 2014 and 2015, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion, according to the business news outlet. However, while facing legal costs in the dispute with HP, it was delisted in 2016.
In addition to legal battles, Lynch has many hobbies to keep him busy, including keeping and caring for cattle and pigs at his home in Suffolk.
“I keep rare breeds,” Lynch told LeadersIn during one interview. “I have cows that disappeared in the 1940s and pigs that nobody has kept since medieval times, and none of them have any Apple products at all.”
Lynch reportedly returned to his farm in Suffolk, a county in eastern England, to recover from his legal battle in the US. The East Anglian Times reported.
Weeks before he was reported missing, Lynch told The Times newspaper how he feared he would die in prison if found guilty of HP’s allegations.
“If this had gone the wrong way, it would have been the end of my life as I knew it in any sense,” Lynch told the interview in the Times.
“It’s strange, but now you have a second life – the question is, what do you want to do with it?” he added.
