Mike Lynch faces $4bn claim in Autonomy fraud case

mike lynch

Mike Lynch, the British technology tycoon, is facing a claim of $4bn (£3.2bn) after he was found to have fraudulently inflated Autonomy’s value before its takeover by Hewlett Packard.

Lawyers for HP called on the High Court to award billions of dollars in damages after Mr Lynch and Autonomy’s former finance chief Sushovan Hussain were found to have inflated the revenues of his Cambridge business prior to its 2011 takeover for $11bn.

The hearing over damages comes two years after Mr Lynch was found by the High Court to have to have “induced” HP and weeks before he faces a criminal trial over the claims in the US.

HP had argued Autonomy, at the direction of Mr Lynch, had manipulated its revenue figures, including by booking “revenue-pumping” transactions.

Conall Patton KC, HP’s lawyer, told the court that there was an “immediate and dramatic effect” on Autonomy’s valuation after the fake revenues were removed.

The US company claimed it was owed around $4bn in damages by Mr Lynch and Hussain, slightly down on its previous calculations. An expert for the US company argued the “actual value” of Autonomy was around $7bn.

However, lawyers for Mr Lynch argued HP would have probably paid the same price for Autonomy, even with the changes to its sales figures, since its executives were more concerned with acquiring its powerful technology.

Richard Hill KC, acting for Mr Lynch, told the court the “fundamental value of the technology is unaffected” by the fraud. “Autonomy would still have been particularly attractive to HP,” he claimed.

Among Mr Lynch’s legal team is Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, previously justice minister under Boris Johnson until 2022.

Mr Justice Hildyard, the judge in the case, previous ruled HP may receive “substantially less” than it had originally sought from Mr Lynch.

Mr Lynch is currently under house arrest in the US awaiting trial, which is expected to begin in March, having spent years fighting extradition ahead of criminal proceedings brought by US prosecutors.

Hussain was previously found guilty in a US court in 2018 on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to five years in prison.

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