Who is Mike Lynch? A look at the British tech tycoon missing from a sunken yacht in Sicily
Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, one of six people missing from a sunken yacht off Sicily, had been trying to move past a Silicon Valley debacle that had tarnished his legacy as an icon of British ingenuity
Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, one of six people missing from a sunken yacht off Sicily, had been trying to move past a Silicon Valley debacle that had tarnished his legacy as an icon of British ingenuity.
Lynch, 59, struck gold when he sold Autonomy, a software maker he founded in 1996, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. But the deal quickly turned into an albatross for him after he was accused of cooking the books to make the sale and fired by HP’s then-CEO Meg Whitman.
He was cleared of criminal charges in the U.S. in June, but still faced a potentially huge bill stemming from a civil case in London.
A decade-long legal battle had resulted in his extradition from the U.K. to face criminal charges of engineering a massive fraud against HP, a company that helped shape Silicon Valley's zeitgeist after starting in a Palo Alto, California, garage in 1939.
Lynch steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, asserting that he was being made a scapegoat for HP's own bungling — a position he maintained while testifying before a jury during a 2 1/2 month trial in San Francisco earlier this year. U.S. Justice Department prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses in an attempt to prove allegations that Lynch engaged in accounting duplicity that bilked billions of dollars from HP.
The trial ended up vindicating Lynch and he pledged to return to the U.K. and explore new ways to innovate.
Although he avoided a possible prison sentence, Lynch still faced the civil case in London that HP mostly won during 2022. Damages haven't been determined in
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