HP Wins £700m in Fraud Case Linked to Late Tycoon Mike Lynch

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A British court has awarded £700 million in damages to technology company Hewlett-Packard following a high-profile fraud case tied to the late Autonomy founder Mike Lynch, who died in a tragic yacht accident last year. The ruling concludes a years-long legal battle stemming from Hewlett-Packard’s controversial purchase of Lynch’s software firm Autonomy in 2011.

Lynch, once hailed as one of Britain’s leading tech minds and referred to by some as the “British Bill Gates,” had sold Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. However, the American firm later accused him and his team of artificially inflating Autonomy’s value by manipulating its accounting records before the sale. The resulting financial fallout led Hewlett-Packard to record nearly $9 billion in write-downs, claiming over $5 billion of those losses were due to fraudulent practices.

Court Delivers Verdict

In a 2022 decision, Justice Robert Hildyard ruled in favor of Hewlett-Packard, but damages were not officially awarded until now. The judge stated in his ruling that “HP’s claim was always substantially exaggerated,” although he ultimately found enough grounds to grant the company a significant payout. The £700 million judgment is well below the $5 billion Hewlett-Packard had initially sought but still marks one of the largest civil fraud awards in the U.K.’s corporate history.

The legal process was overshadowed by Lynch’s sudden death in August 2024. While anchored off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, his 56-metre superyacht, Bayesian, was hit by a mini-tornado before dawn. The violent weather event led to the sinking of the British-flagged vessel, killing Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, four guests, and the yacht’s cook. The group had reportedly been celebrating Lynch’s acquittal in a separate US criminal case related to the same Autonomy sale.

Lynch, who was 59, had always denied the allegations against him. He claimed that Hewlett-Packard mismanaged the company after the acquisition and used him as a scapegoat for their failures. His legal team had prepared a written response to the court’s judgment, though it was never made public due to his untimely passing.

Despite the civil win in Britain, Hewlett-Packard’s silence following the ruling has raised some eyebrows. The company did not respond to requests for comment from Agence France-Presse.

The judgment also highlights the contrast between civil and criminal proceedings. While Lynch was cleared of wrongdoing in the United States under the higher burden of proof required in criminal law, the U.K. civil case only needed to meet the balance of probabilities to reach a verdict.

This ruling closes a significant chapter in one of the U.K.’s most dramatic corporate fraud sagas. Though Lynch is no longer alive to defend his legacy, the outcome cements the view that serious questions remain about the financial integrity of one of Britain’s most celebrated tech entrepreneurs.