\n<\/p>\n
The estate of Mike Lynch, who died a year ago when his superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily, and his business partner owe Hewlett-Packard more than \u00a3700m, a court has ruled.<\/p>\n
The US technology company has been seeking damages of up to $4.55bn (\u00a33.37bn) from the estate of the late tycoon, once hailed as the UK\u2019s answer to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, over its disastrous takeover of his British software company Autonomy.<\/p>\n
Lynch\u2019s estate has been estimated to be worth about \u00a3500m and paying its share of the \u00a3700m damages could leave it bankrupt.<\/p>\n
He and six others, including his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died last August on a trip celebrating his acquittal on US fraud charges relating to HP\u2019s $11bn takeover of Autonomy in 2011.<\/p>\n
However, HP won a separate six-year civil fraud case against Lynch and his former finance director Sushovan Hussain in the English high court in 2022, with Mr Justice Hildyard ruling that the US company had been induced into overpaying for the business.<\/p>\n
In a ruling at the high court on Tuesday, Hildyard ruled on the amount owed to HP. He determined that HP sustained losses of more than \u00a3646m in relation to the difference between what it paid for Autonomy and what it would have paid if its true financial position had been known.<\/p>\n
\u201cAutonomy\u2019s true financial position and performance had not been properly and accurately disclosed, and had it been so, HP would not have proceeded with its acquisition of Autonomy at the bid price,\u201d said Hildyard.<\/p>\n
Hildyard also said HP was entitled to another \u00a351.7m in relation to \u201cpersonal claims for deceit and\/or misrepresentation against Dr Lynch and Mr Hussain\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Hildyard said he considered that HP\u2019s original $4.55bn claim \u201cwas always exaggerated, and I have concluded that there is more than a grain of truth in Dr Lynch\u2019s submission\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lynch had intended to appeal against the high court\u2019s 2022 ruling, a process that was on hold pending Tuesday\u2019s decision on damages.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Lynch family said they would consider an appeal to the damages ruling, adding that it reflected \u201cthat HP\u2019s original $5bn damages claim was not just a wild overstatement \u2013 misleading shareholders \u2013 but it was off the mark by 80%\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In 2019, Hussain was sentenced to jail for five years after a US jury found him guilty of fraud over the Autonomy sale. He was also ordered to pay financial penalties of about $10m.<\/p>\n He started his prison sentence in 2020 but was released early and returned to the UK last year.<\/p>\n Last July, Hussain was excluded from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales until 2038, following a decision by the Financial Reporting Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The estate of Mike Lynch, who died a year ago when his superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily, and his business partner owe Hewlett-Packard more than \u00a3700m, a court has ruled. The US technology company has been seeking damages of up to $4.55bn (\u00a33.37bn) from the estate of the late tycoon, once hailed as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[5211,303,160,709,5212,5209,4520,5210,1657,666],"class_list":{"0":"post-11732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-700m","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-court","11":"tag-estate","12":"tag-hewlettpackard","13":"tag-lynchs","14":"tag-mike","15":"tag-owe","16":"tag-partner","17":"tag-rules"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}