Who’s Mike Lynch, UK tech entrepreneur lacking in superyacht sinking?

LONDON — British expertise 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 big for $11.7 billion in 2011.

Simply two months after his acquittal, Lynch — who was as soon as lauded by the U.Okay. nationwide press as “Britain’s Bill 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 response to native media experiences.

Lynch’s spouse, Angela Bacares, is among the many 15 individuals who had been rescued after the yacht’s collapse. A minimum of 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 Tuesday.

In a separate incident Saturday, Stephen Chamberlain, the previous vp of finance at Autonomy and a co-defendant in Lynch’s trial, died after being “fatally struck” by a automobile whereas out working in Cambridgeshire, England, Chamberlain’s lawyer informed the 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 expertise 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 yr of shopping for it.

Lynch was extradited from Britain to the U.S. final yr to face trial over the HP allegations. He confronted felony 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 quite a few methods.

These included back-dated agreements and so-called round-tripping offers that sought to artificially inflate Autonomy’s gross sales by fronting money to clients by way of pretend 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 alerts processing and communications.

Towards the tip of the Nineteen Eighties, Lynch based Lynett Programs Ltd., a agency which produced designs and audio merchandise for the music trade.

A number 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 clients.

However his massive 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 among Britain’s largest tech companies.

Lynch held plenty of affect within the U.Okay. expertise 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.Okay. broadcaster BBC. He additionally as soon as served as an advisor to the British authorities on the Council for Science and Expertise.

In his position 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 companies with sizable sums of money.

Publicly listed Darktrace, which had fended off comparable allegations of inflating its income by U.S. quick vendor Quintessential Capital Administration, earlier this yr agreed to a deal to be 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 value of $1 billion, in response to the enterprise information outlet. Nonetheless, whereas going through 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 conserving and caring for cattle and pigs at his dwelling in Suffolk.

“I keep rare breeds,” Lynch informed LeadersIn throughout an interview. “I have cows that became defunct in the 1940s and pigs that no one has kept since the medieval times and none of them have any Apple products whatsoever.”

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 wrong way, it would have been the end of my life as I have known it in any sense,” Lynch mentioned within the interview with The Occasions.

“It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life – the question is, what do you want to do with it?” he added.