In 2006, Lynch was awarded an OBE in recognition of his contribution to British enterprise, and in 2011 he became an adviser to the UK government on matters relating to science and technology.
The public perception of Lynch, however, would be defined by the $11.7 billion sale of Autonomy to Hewlett Packard in 2011. – a deal that fell through soon after closing and for which he was subsequently accused of fraud.
Within a year, HP reduced the value of the purchase by $8.8 billion, claiming it had uncovered “serious accounting irregularities” and “flagrant misstatements.” In 2019 The US Department of Justice filed 17 charges against Lynch based on these allegations. The superseding indictment lists various charges, including fraud and conspiracy.
U.S. prosecutors allege that Lynch began an elaborate, multiyear scheme in which he backdated and fabricated sales and lied about the state of Autonomy’s finances in public filings. The effect, they claim, was to trick HP into buying Autonomy at an inflated price. Prosecutors say Lynch himself walked away from the deal with at least $640 million in cash.
After a lengthy extradition legal battle, Lynch eventually faced a criminal trial in the US in early 2024. He always denied the charges against him, but the chances of an acquittal did not look good; in 2018 Autonomy’s CFO Sushovan Hussain was convicted on similar charges, and in 2022. Lynch lost a civil case in the UK High Court, which concluded with a ruling that Autonomy executives had fraudulently inflated the firm’s reported revenues, profits and value.
But after a winding, 12-week trial in federal court in San Francisco, Lynch was cleared of all charges by a jury, avoiding the prospect of more than 20 years in prison. In a statement released after the trial, Lynch described himself as “ecstatic” and said he was “looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovation in my field”.
In a separate incident, Lynch’s co-accused, Stephen Chamberlain, a former vice president of finance at Autonomy, also died after being hit by a car in Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, over the weekend.
In an interview with The Times – his first since the verdict – Lynch spoke of the strangeness of being given a “second life”: “The question is, what do you want to do with it?”
“This man was a legend, a genius, a gift to world business, and most of all a man,” says Tabizel. “Britain’s Bill Gates? Not really. British Steve Jobs.
Updated 8/22/2024 12:30 BST: This story has been updated with a tribute to Lynch by David Tabizel.
