Mike Lynch, once hailed as “Britain’s Bill Gates”, is now one of six people who have gone missing since him. A luxury yacht sinks in a storm On the coast of Sicily. At the time of the disaster, Lynch was trying to shake off more than a decade of legal troubles that ended in June. Acquitted of fraud and conspiracy charges.
Lynch, 59, rose to prominence in the late 1990s with the development of his software company Autonomy, which helped businesses quickly find information buried in e-mail and other digital documents. In 2011, Lynch sold the business to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion, paying him $800 million and cementing him as one of the UK’s richest men.
But after the takeover was invited One of the “worst failed mergers and acquisitions” led to Lynch being fired by HP’s then-CEO Meg Whitman after HP discovered accounting problems. HP has claimed that Autonomy used accounting irregularities to inflate its underlying finances ahead of the acquisition, something Lynch strongly denies.
The case spanned a 12-year legal battle that ended in June 2024 when a federal court jury in San Francisco returned not guilty verdicts.
“I look forward to returning to the UK and doing what I love most – my family and innovating in my industry,” Lynch said in a statement after the verdict.
Here’s what you need to know about Lynch.
Which company did Mike Lynch start?
Lynch, who earned a PhD in mathematical computing from the University of Cambridge in England, first founded Cambridge Neurodynamics. The company used the technology to match fingerprints and car license plates, one step 1997 article In The Guardian.
From there, Lynch incorporated Autonomy in 1996, which relied on a statistical model called Bayesian inference, named after a theorem developed by 18th-century statistician Thomas Bayes. (Lynch’s luxury yacht was named “Basian”.)
The company tapped into the growing need for businesses to sort and find information within vast amounts of data created by the increasing use of computers and digital documents.
In 2006 Lynch was awarded the Office of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, one of England’s highest honours, as a result of Autonomy’s steady growth in its first decade.
Lynch told The Guardian in 1997 that people didn’t believe a booming tech business would emerge from the UK.
“England, software? I thought you made bone china,” he told the newspaper.
What happened after HP acquired Autonomy?
At first, HP celebrated the purchase as a major coup that would put the Palo Alto, California-based company on a promising new path, but it quickly soured under then-CEO Meg Whitman.
HP said it found accounting irregularities, and the company recognized $8.8 billion in losses on the Autonomy deal. Whitman eventually fired Lynch in 2012, while HP laid off thousands of workers as its fortunes plummeted.
Over the past 12 years, Lynch has denied the allegations. He said The Wall Street Journal described it in 2012 as “stunned” by the claims, “absolutely false.”
What Happened to Mike Lynch’s Lawsuit?
Lynch maintained his innocence while testifying before a jury during a 2 1/2-month trial in San Francisco earlier this year. US Justice Department prosecutors have called more than 30 witnesses in an attempt to prove allegations that Lynch engaged in fraudulent accounting that bilked HP out of billions of dollars.
The jury, as noted above, returned not guilty verdicts in June, acquitting Lynch, who promised to return to England and find new ways to innovate.
Who is Mike Lynch’s wife?
Mike Lynch is married to Angela Bagares, who was one of the men rescued from the Mediterranean after a boat capsized. They have two daughters, Lynch and Pararez. One of them, Hannah, 18, is among the missing. According to to the BBC.
Baycares, 57, owns a stake in Darktrace, a British cybersecurity company he and Lynch co-founded, Sun. Mentioned. She sat in the front row of the courtroom during her husband’s trial but generally preferred to stay out of the public eye, the Times of London reported. reported The month of July.
“We decided Angela would not be involved in this case. She was completely separate. Her focus was on family and children,” Lynch told The Times last month.
— with a report from the Associated Press.
