Who is Mike Lynch, UK tech entrepreneur missing in superyacht sinking?

LONDON — British know-how entrepreneur Mike Lynch was acquitted of fraud prices in June in a landmark trial over allegations made by Hewlett Packard that he had artificially inflated the worth of his firm when he bought it to the U.S. enterprise tech large for $11.7 billion in 2011.

Simply two months after his acquittal, Lynch — who was as soon as lauded by the U.Ok. nationwide press as “Britain’s Invoice Gates” — was reported lacking Monday after the sinking of a superyacht off the coast of Sicily.

The yacht, referred to as the Bayesian, capsized at round 4 a.m. native time whereas anchored off the coast of Porticello, a small fishing village situated within the province of Palermo in Italy. It was struck by an unexpectedly violent storm, in line with native media studies.

Lynch’s spouse, Angela Bacares, is among the many 15 individuals who had been rescued after the yacht’s collapse. No less than one man has died, whereas six folks — together with Lynch’s daughter Hannah — stay unaccounted for, officers have mentioned.

Sicily’s civil safety company informed reporters late Monday that Morgan Stanley Worldwide chairman, Jonathan Bloomer, his spouse Judy, Clifford Likelihood lawyer Chris Morvillo and his spouse Neda had been additionally lacking as troublesome search and rescue efforts resumed on Tuesday.

In a separate incident Saturday, Stephen Chamberlain, the previous vice chairman of finance at Autonomy and a co-defendant in Lynch’s trial, died after being “fatally struck” by a automotive whereas out working in Cambridgeshire, Chamberlain’s lawyer informed Reuters information company.

Lynch, 59, is the founding father of enterprise software program agency Autonomy. He additionally runs Invoke Capital, a enterprise capital agency targeted on backing European tech startups, which he based in 2012.

He grew to become the goal of a protracted authorized battle with Hewlett Packard after the know-how agency accused Lynch of inflating Autonomy’s worth in an $11.7 billion sale. HP took an $8.8 billion write-down on the worth of Autonomy inside a 12 months of shopping for it.

Lynch was extradited from Britain to the U.S. final 12 months to face trial over the HP allegations. He confronted prison prices, together with wire fraud and conspiracy for allegedly scheming to inflate Autonomy’s income beginning in 2009 in a bid to entice a purchaser.

However two months in the past, Lynch, who has lengthy denied the accusations, was acquitted of fraud prices in a shock victory following the trial, which lasted for 3 months.

In the course of the trial, Lynch took the stand in his personal protection, denying wrongdoing and telling jurors that HP botched Autonomy’s integration.

Prosecutors had alleged Lynch, together with Autonomy’s now-deceased finance govt Chamberlain, padded Autonomy’s funds in numerous methods.

These included back-dated agreements and so-called “round-tripping” offers that sought to artificially inflate Autonomy’s gross sales by fronting money money to prospects via faux contracts.

Lynch informed jurors that he was targeted on technology-related issues at Autonomy and left accounting and cash choices to the corporate’s then-chief monetary officer, Sushovan Hussain.

Hussain was individually convicted within the U.S. in 2018 on prices of conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud associated to the HP deal. He was launched from jail in January after serving a five-year sentence.

Lynch was born in Ilford, a big city in East London, in 1965 and grew up close to Chelmsford in the English county of Essex.

He attended the College of Cambridge, the place he studied pure sciences, specializing in areas together with electronics, arithmetic and biology. After finishing his undergraduate research, Lynch accomplished a Ph.D. in indicators processing and communications.

Towards the top of the Eighties, Lynch based Lynett Techniques Ltd., a agency which produced designs and audio merchandise for the music business.

A couple of years later, within the early Nineteen Nineties, he based a fingerprint recognition enterprise referred to as Cambridge Neurodynamics, which counted the South Yorkshire Police amongst its prospects.

However his large break got here in 1996 with Autonomy, which he co-founded with David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt as a derivative from Cambridge Neurodynamics. The corporate scaled into one in every of Britain’s largest tech corporations.

Lynch held a number of affect within the U.Ok. know-how sphere on the peak of his success, having as soon as been dubbed Britain’s Invoice Gates by the media.

He was beforehand on the board of U.Ok. broadcaster BBC. He additionally as soon as served as an advisor to the British authorities on the Council for Science and Expertise.

In his function as head of enterprise agency Invoke, Lynch was carefully concerned in serving to British cybersecurity agency Darktrace and authorized software program startup Luminance get off the bottom, backing each corporations with sizable sums of money.

Publicly-listed Darktrace, which had fended off comparable allegations of inflating its revenues by U.S. quick vendor Quintessential Capital Administration (QCM), earlier this 12 months agreed a deal to purchased out and brought personal by U.S. personal fairness agency Thoma Bravo for $5.32 billion in money.

Lynch beforehand made the Forbes’ billionaires listing in 2014 and 2015, with an estimate web price of $1 billion, in line with the enterprise information outlet. Nevertheless, whereas dealing with authorized prices within the dispute with HP, he dropped off the listing in 2016.

Authorized struggles apart, Lynch has a number of hobbies to maintain him busy, together with protecting and caring for cattle and pigs at his house in Suffolk.

“I hold uncommon breeds,” Lynch informed LeadersIn throughout an interview. “I’ve cows that grew to become defunct within the Nineteen Forties and pigs that nobody has saved for the reason that medieval occasions and none of them have any Apple merchandise by any means.”

Lynch reportedly returned to his farm in Suffolk, a county within the East of England, to get better from his U.S. authorized battle, the native East Anglian Occasions newspaper reported.

Weeks earlier than he was reported lacking, Lynch informed The Occasions newspaper of how he feared dying in jail if discovered responsible over the HP allegations.

“‘If this had gone the incorrect means, it could have been the top of my life as I’ve recognized it in any sense,” Lynch mentioned within the interview with The Occasions.

“It is weird, however now you may have a second life – the query is, what do you need to do with it?” he added.