Mr. Hussein, below, got 5 years in prison.
Posted on 07/22/2025 10:35:09 AM PDT by RandFan
The estate of tech tycoon Mike Lynch - who died last year when his yacht sank - and his business partner owe tech giant Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) £700m, the High Court has ruled.
HPE bought Mr Lynch's tech firm Autonomy in 2011, but it says Mr Lynch and Autonomy's former chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, misrepresented the company's finances.
The court ruled that HPE had paid more than it would have done "had Autonomy's true financial position been correctly presented" during the sale.
A spokesperson said Mr Lynch had prepared a statement on the ruling last year which called HPE's initial claim for up to $5bn (£3.7bn) a "wild overstatement".
Mr Lynch and his teenage daughter Hannah were among seven passengers and crew who died when the Bayesian went down off the coast of Sicily last August during a storm which caused the vessel to capsize and sink.
Tuesday's ruling was delayed because of the tragedy.
The judge expressed his "sorrow at this devastating turn of events, and my sympathy and deepest condolences", adding that he "admired" Mr Lynch despite ruling against him.
In response to the ruling, HPE said it looked forward to "the further hearing at which the final amount of HPE's damages will be determined".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
They paid $10 billion for this company before Mr. Lynch died.
The judge effectively reversed his multi-million windfall from the sale.
Very interesting...
Lynch was actually prosecuted in the US and extradited but won. Rare as hell that.
"He was celebrating being acquitted on his yacht when it sank."
“Sushovan Hussain, misrepresented the company’s finances”
ya don’t say?
Yes I think by several times. Ouch.
However, he was acquitted of fraud charges before his death
A real strange turn of events
Mr. Hussein, below, got 5 years in prison.
from everything i’ve read about him, Mike Lynch was the Sam Bankman-Fried of software scams in the UK ...
I’m surprised Lynch wasn’t making those late night TV ads with his yacht before it went down, you know, the ones with a bevy of bikini-clad babes hanging on while Lynch touts, “You too can easily make gazillions like i did with software.” ...
A billion sounds huge but the HP Shareholders still -10 billion (down). Shocking!
The estate of tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, who died last summer when his superyacht sank off the coast of Italy, may be wiped out after a U.K. court ruled it owed Hewlett Packard Enterprise HPE -0.93%decrease; red down pointing triangle hundreds of millions of dollars.
In a judgment Tuesday, the High Court in London said Lynch’s estate and his former business partner Sushovan Hussain owed HPE more than 700 million pounds, equivalent to about $945 million, related to the U.S. tech company’s ill-fated takeover of Autonomy, the British software company the pair ran.
A representative for Lynch’s estate said they would consider an appeal.
If the ruling is upheld, the amount owed would likely exceed the value of the Lynch family’s assets, which are estimated to be valued at about £473 million, according to Britain’s Sunday Times Rich List.
Tuesday’s judgment comes after the High Court found in 2022 that Autonomy’s “true financial position and performance had not been properly and accurately disclosed” when it was bought by Hewlett Packard for more than $11 billion in 2011. HP wrote down much of the value of Autonomy in 2012 and said it was duped into overpaying.
HPE, a successor company to HP, had been seeking damages of up to $4.55 billion in the case. Justice Robert Hildyard said Tuesday that he considered that claim “substantially exaggerated.”
(Per WSJ)
The real question is where is Mike Lynch living now?
(Folks aren’t really buying the boat story, are they?)
what always amazed me about the Mike Lynch HP deal was the absolutely pathetic due diligence exercised for a deal this big ...
heck, there was enough information in the popular press alone about this con artist and his “software” companies, several of which had already sunk under Lynch’s helm (like his yacht) ...
plus, at a minimum these fools could have visited companies that had already purchased Lynch software to see what they had to say about it ... my guess, is that charismatic sociopath Lynch convinced then HP CEO Léo Apotheker to do the deal on the spot in 2011. ...
[Léo Apotheker was fired from his position as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP) in September 2011, after only 11 months in the role. His tenure was marked by a significant decline in HP’s stock price and strategic missteps, leading to his dismissal.]
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.