The estate of the late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has been ordered by London's High Court to pay £920m to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in compensation, costs and interest. The ruling relates to the 2011 takeover of Lynch's software firm Autonomy by Hewlett-Packard (HP), which later split into HP and HPE.
The High Court found that Lynch duped HP into paying $11bn (£8.2bn) for Autonomy, a sum that HP later wrote down by $8.8bn within a year. The £920m figure includes £700m in compensation, as previously ruled, plus additional costs and interest. Lynch's estate, estimated to be worth about £500m, may be bankrupted by the award.
Lynch and six others, including his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died in August 2024 when their superyacht sank off Sicily. The trip was to celebrate his acquittal on US fraud charges related to the same Autonomy deal. HPE had sought up to $4.55bn in damages, but the High Court last year described that claim as 'always exaggerated'.
Lawyers for Lynch's estate sought permission to appeal Tuesday's ruling, which was refused. However, the estate can apply directly to the Court of Appeal. HPE welcomed the decision, saying it 'brings us another step closer to resolution of the dispute'.
A spokesperson for the Lynch family expressed disappointment, stating that HP's $5bn damages claim 'has already been shown to be vastly exaggerated' and that 'the damage to Autonomy was the result of HP's own actions and failures, not wrongdoing at Autonomy'.
