The American giant had filed a lawsuit against Mike Lynch in 2011. It accuses him of fraudulently inflating the value of the software publisher he founded.
Nothing seems to be able to put an end to this legal saga that is more than ten years old… not even the death of the person concerned. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced that it is continuing its proceedings against the heirs of Mike Lynch, after he died in the sinking of his yacht a little over two weeks ago. At the end of August, the founder of the software publisher Autonomy was killed in a storm off the coast of Sicily alongside six other passengers, including his 18-year-old daughter Hannah.
HP (now HPE after the Silicon Valley-based computing giant was spun off) sued Mike Lynch in 2011. According to the company, the businessman, with the complicity of his CFO, fraudulently inflated the value of Autonomy before selling it to the American giant for $11 billion. HP then suffered significant writedowns when it discovered that Autonomy’s reported revenue, revenue growth and margins had been artificially inflated.
Also readThe mysteries of the sinking of the Bayesian, the giant sailboat of British tycoon Mike Lynch
Claim damages even if it tarnishes your image
Despite the death of Mike Lynch, HPE says it will seek damages from the businessman’s heirs. The group said in a statement that it has “the intention to go through with the procedure”taking advantage of a specific feature of the British legal system, which allows a civil case to be passed on to the defendant’s estate in the event of death. In this case, Angela Bacares, Mike Lynch’s wife who survived the disaster, inherits her husband’s legal affairs.
In the past, the American and British courts, both seized by HPE, had ruled differently in the Autonomy case. Mike Lynch was acquitted in June by the San Francisco court after more than a decade of proceedings, while the British courts found him guilty in 2022 of having dishonestly increased the value of Autonomy. HPE was claiming $4 billion from Mike Lynch, an amount that the judge in charge of the case will have to specify.
This decision could, however, harm HPE’s reputation, by giving the impression that the American group is going after Mike Lynch’s widow, already overwhelmed by the double bereavement of her husband and daughter. A final twist in a legal saga so long and costly that it is already nicknamed “The trial of the century”.
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