Mike Lynch dies aged 59 – spent many of his last months under house arrest

“Now you have a second life. The question is, what do you want to do with it?”

Lynch, 59, was pronounced dead on Thursday after the Bayesian superyacht he was on board with 21 other passengers sank in the Mediterranean on Monday morning. His body was found by divers after he was reported missing for several days along with his daughter Hannah, 18, Morgan Stanley international chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy and lawyer Clifford Chance , Chris Morvillo, and his wife, American jewelry designer Neda. .

He will be remembered as one of Britain’s most exciting tech founders, as well as for the ensuing legal battle that raged for more than a decade after he profited from that creation.

“Mike saw possibilities before others could – so often he was proven right as the world caught up with him and his ideas,” said Baroness Joanna Shields, former CEO of Google and Facebook. wealth.

“He was finally free to dream and invent again, making his tragic passing all the more devastating for his family, our industry and this country.”

Lynch’s early years

Lynch was born in Ireland and grew up in Chelmsford, Essex. His mother was a nurse and his father was a firefighter.

Speaking in 2016, Lynch said his father gave him advice to “get a job that doesn’t involve running into burning buildings”.

“He realized the importance of education, so that was something that was really promoted in my house,” Lynch said.

Lynch studied physics, mathematics and biochemistry at Cambridge University. His ground-breaking research in pattern recognition and adaptive technology, which he conducted for his PhD thesis, helped him found Cambridge Neurodynamics in 1991.

He received a £2,000 ($2,600) loan from a music manager to start his business. He detailed how the man, who he says “discovered one of the biggest rock bands in the world”, lived in a wine bar in Soho and would go “to hang out until 4am”.

“Luckily, when I met him, he was well wrapped, so his due diligence was pretty quick and he loaned me the money on the spot,” Lynch said of his first funding win.

He later spun off the group into Autonomy in 1996, before taking it public in 1998.

Lynch became a mammoth figure in the UK business world after the turn of the century, leading many to label him Britain’s answer to Bill Gates. He was an adviser to two prime ministers, keen to develop his brain as one of the country’s biggest tech moguls.

The Hewlett Packard scandal

Autonomy’s valuation has skyrocketed in the 15 years since its creation, leading to its 2011 acquisition by California-based Hewlett Packard for $11.7 billion.

While he toasts his years of hard work, culminating in a sale that brought Lynch £500 million ($640 million), it would also define his remaining years.

Within a year of the acquisition, HP wrote down Autonomy’s value by $8.8 billion as revenue began to decline, citing “accounting irregularities.”

HP alleged that Lynch and his allies used accounting gimmicks to inflate the value of Autonomy before its sale. Instead of selling software to customers, HP claimed Lynch instead packaged the hardware as part of its loss-making deals.

An ensuing legal battle took place on both sides of the Atlantic over the next decade.

The UK’s Serious Fraud Office closed its case against Lynch in 2015, citing “insufficient evidence” to proceed with a conviction.

In a civil trial in London in 2022, a judge ruled in favor of HP’s claims, arguing that Lynch “knew full well” that he had misrepresented Autonomy’s financial figures.

HP claimed it lost $4 billion from the acquisition and sought $5.1 billion in damages from Lynch in Britain’s high court. However, the judge said the damages would be considerably less than that amount.

Lynch was placed under house arrest in July 2022 while awaiting extradition to the US to face charges in a separate criminal trial, spending a year in limbo before defending himself in the States.

In June, a jury acquitted Lynch of 15 counts of fraud. Lynch’s lawyers successfully argued that prosecutors failed to prove he committed fraud to meet revenue targets.

Other works

While Lynch denied HP’s allegations in the 2010s, he began a career in venture capital, founding Invoke Capital in 2012. The venture capital firm has funded companies such as Darktrace and Luminance, an artificial intelligence company that raised 40 million dollars in April.

Much of Lynch and his family’s net worth in his later years was tied to their Darktrace properties.

Group CEO Poppy Gustafsson served under Lynch as corporate controller at Autonomy.

Lynch was celebrating his acquittal off the coast of Sicily with friends and family when the superyacht Baeysian he was on was hit by violent storms early Monday morning.

He is survived by his wife, Angela Bacares, and his other daughter.

Recommended newsletter: High-level information for high-powered executives. Subscribe to the CEO Daily newsletter for free today. Subscribe now.