As soon as dubbed the British “Invoice Gates”, tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch is amongst these lacking since Monday after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily in a sudden storm.
The sinking got here the identical day as Lynch’s former shut colleague and vice-president of finance at Autonomy, Stephen Chamberlain, additionally died in a freak coincidence having been hit by a automobile whereas out working.
59-year-old Lynch — who was solely acquitted weeks in the past within the US after going through large fraud prices — was reportedly with colleagues on board the Bayesian superyacht moored off the coast of Porticello, east of Palermo.
His spouse, Angela Bacares, was among the many 15 folks rescued, however his daughter Hannah is among the many six lacking, Salvo Cocina, head of the Civil Safety Company in Sicily, instructed AFP.
Who’s Mike Lynch?
Initially from Suffolk in east England, Lynch was a former advisor to 2 British prime ministers and was as soon as a star entrepreneur who appeared to characterize a uncommon tech British success story.
The businessman has a fortune of £500 million ($648 million) in line with the most recent Sunday Occasions “Wealthy Listing”, and owes his fame to his software program agency Autonomy which he bought to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.
Lynch was a well-loved and admired tech pioneer, who impressed future generations to start out their very own corporations within the U.Okay. and past.
“Mike was a UK tech chief who had a uncommon deep understanding of expertise and a capability to commercialise it at scale. He discovered expertise, supported that expertise and helped them scale,” Brent Hoberman, entrepreneur and founding father of Founders Discussion board and Lastminute.com, instructed Fortune.
Baroness Joanna Shields, a former managing director at Google and Fb, instructed Fortune: “Mike noticed prospects earlier than others might even conceive them — so usually confirmed proper because the world caught up with him and his concepts. He was lastly free once more to dream and invent, making his tragic passing all of the extra devastating for his household, our business, and this nation.”
Lynch based Autonomy in 1996 in Cambridge, the place he earned his doctorate, and turned it into a number one British tech agency.
However only one 12 months after the mega-deal, HP reported a write-down of $8.8 billion — together with greater than $5 billion it attributed to inflated information from Autonomy — plunging Lynch and lots of of his colleagues right into a decade-long fraud scandal.
Prosecutors accused him and others of collaborating in a large scheme as Autonomy’s chief government to deceive HP by pumping up his firm’s worth earlier than its sale.
Autonomy’s former CFO Sushovan Hussain was discovered responsible of fraud in 2018 by a US jury, with Hussain jailed for 5 years.
Within the case in opposition to Hussain prosecutors mentioned he and his co-conspirators in defrauding HP had “an angle that, like a James Bond villain or a Mafioso, they have been above the regulation.”
Final 12 months, Lynch was extradited from Britain to the US to face trial, going through twenty years in jail if convicted of the 17 prices and spending the 12 months in home arrest.
However in June he was acquitted on all prices.
“I’m wanting ahead to returning to the UK and getting again to what I really like most: my household and innovating in my subject,” Lynch mentioned after the decision was handed down in a San Francisco court docket.
A bully or a scapegoat?
Lynch — who made round $815 million from the Autonomy sale — at all times denied the fraud prices, accusing HP of constructing him a scapegoat for its personal failings.
Prosecutors in the meantime had painted the chief as a bully, forcing underlings to assist him cook dinner the books of Autonomy and tricking HP into paying billions of {dollars}.
After returning to the UK, Lynch instructed The Occasions in July that he had “numerous medical issues that might have made it tough to outlive” in an American jail.
Talking in regards to the verdict, Lynch had instructed the Occasions: “It’s weird, however now you might have a second life. The query is, what do you wish to do with it?”
Father of two daughters aged 18 and 21, and a canine lover–proudly owning two dachshunds and 4 sheepdogs–Lynch has a house within the prosperous London district of Chelsea, in line with the newspaper, in addition to proudly owning a farm in Suffolk.
Regardless of the acquittal, the fraud case will not be closed.
In 2022, London’s Excessive Court docket dominated in a civil fraud case that HP had been duped and had overpaid for Autonomy.
The court docket has but to rule on the billions of {dollars} in damages claimed by the American group.
Darktrace’s woes
The shadow of Lynch’s authorized troubles has additionally lengthy weighed on the share costs of one other British firm — the cybersecurity and synthetic intelligence group Darktrace.
Darktrace was co-founded by Lynch and several other Autonomy executives, together with the not too long ago deceased Stephen Chamberlain and Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain.
At one level half of Darktrace’s board and the vast majority of its prime executives have been former Autonomy workers, nonetheless, that quantity has fallen in recent times.
Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson has been related with Lynch since 2009 and beforehand labored as a company controller at HP Autonomy.
In a reversal of fortune, Darktrace accepted a $5.3 billion takeover provide from US personal fairness agency Thoma Bravo in April, sending its share value hovering.