The estate of the late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has been ordered to pay £920m to the technology company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) two years after he died in a superyacht disaster.
The ruling by London’s high court said the estate was liable to pay the sum as compensation, costs and interest for the acquisition of Lynch’s firm Autonomy by Hewlett-Packard (HP), after a UK legal ruling in 2022 that he duped the US company into paying £8.2bn for the software firm.
HP split into two separate companies in 2015 – one still called HP, which focuses on printers and PCs, and the software and hardware company HPE.
The deceased entrepreneur’s estate has been estimated to be worth about £500m, so the damages could leave it bankrupt.
Lynch and six others, including his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died in August 2024 during a trip with friends and family to celebrate his acquittal on US fraud charges relating to HP’s $11bn (£8.2bn) takeover of Autonomy in 2011.
HP accused Lynch and Autonomy’s former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain of inflating the firm’s value before the takeover. HP wrote down Autonomy’s worth by $8.8bn within a year of the purchase.
The US tech company has sought damages in UK civil proceedings of up to $4.55bn from the estate of the late tycoon, who was once hailed as Britain’s answer to the Microsoft founder, Bill Gates.
However, the level of the claim was ruled last year by the high court to be “always exaggerated”, as it concluded that Lynch’s estate owed £700m in compensation. The £920m figure includes costs and interest.
Lawyers for Lynch’s estate sought permission to appeal against Tuesday’s ruling, which was refused. However, the estate can apply directly to the court of appeal.
HPE welcomed the decision, which it said in a statement “brings us another step closer to resolution of the dispute”.
A spokesperson for the Lynch family said: “We are disappointed by the court’s refusal and believe an application to the court of appeal should follow in the interests of justice. HP’s $5bn damages claim has already been shown to be vastly exaggerated.
“Today’s judgment describes the exaggeration as ‘without foundation’ and the purposes for which it was ‘calibrated, publicised and pursued’ as objectionable, misleading shareholders and extending the litigation unnecessarily.
“Dr Lynch’s acquittal in the US, where witnesses were properly cross-examined, exposed the truth. The damage to Autonomy was the result of HP’s own actions and failures, not wrongdoing at Autonomy.”
