Hewlett Packard Enterprises’s boss has hit back after his company was accused of ‘a complete lack of humility’ for suing the family of Mike Lynch following his death.
Antonio Neri, chief executive of the US software group, said it was a ‘difficult’ decision to continue the £3billion fraud lawsuit against the British tycoon’s estate.
But he insisted the move was ‘in the best interest of shareholders’.
Lynch, 59, and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among seven people who died when superyacht Bayesian sank off Sicily last month.
The family was celebrating Lynch’s acquittal on US fraud charges relating to Hewlett Packard’s £8billion purchase of his technology company Autonomy in 2011.
Lawsuit: UK software tycoon Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah (pictured) were among seven people who died when his superyacht Bayesian sank off Sicily last month
The luxury vessel capsized and sunk off the coast of Sicily, Italy, in bad weather on August 19 whilst moored around half a mile off the coast of Porticello
Antonio Neri, chief executive of the US software group Hewlett Packard, has defended their pursuit of a lawsuit against the family of Mike Lynch
The decision by Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) to continue with separate legal action against Lynch’s estate following his death has sparked outrage.
Patrick Jacob, a close friend of the entrepreneur, last week accused HPE of first ‘pursuing a man through a relentless battle in the press’ and now going after his widow, Angela Bacares, 57, who survived.
‘Before the bodies are even laid to rest, they’ve already begun circling like vultures, demonstrating a complete lack of humanity,’ Jacob said last week.
‘This is nothing short of heartless and distasteful.’
But speaking to the Financial Times yesterday, Neri, 57, said Lynch’s acquittal and then death did not change HPE’s plan to pursue a separate civil claim over the acquisition.
He said: ‘Obviously, my job as a representative of shareholders is to make the difficult decisions.
‘But in the end, we are making decisions in the best interest of shareholders.
‘What we saw is a sad story. But the reality of what happened does not change what happened in the past decade or so, where we believe wrongdoing was done, and therefore, we have to see through the process.’
Mike Lynch, known as ‘Britain’s Bill Gates ‘, died when his £30million superyacht sank during a freak storm off the coast of Sicily
The Bayesian (pictured in an undated handout photo) overturned during a severe thunderstorm in the early hours of August 19
Although Lynch was cleared of US criminal charges in June over the sale of Autonomy, HPE won a civil lawsuit in the High Court in 2022.
A judge is expected to award damages by the end of the year.
Friends of the late businessman Mr Lynch including Conservative MP Sir David Davis have called for HPE to drop the claim.
Sir David said last month: ‘I would think the wise thing for Hewlett-Packard to do in their own interest is to drop the case because they are not going to make a great deal of money out of it but they are going to make themselves very unpopular with the ordinary members of the public, picking on a bereaved family.’
HPE, a corporate hardware and services business is separate from computer and printer maker HP Inc after a split in 2015.
This week it was revealed an elite Italian navy unit was sending divers and robots down to the wreck of Mr Lynch’s yacht the Bayesian, which is currently lying more than 160ft below the waters surrounding Porticello, Sicily, after sinking on August 19.
Questions over how the £30 million vessel, which measured more than 180ft in length, sank so quickly that the seven of the 22 people onboard at the time died, have been raised by investigating authorities.
In an attempt to answer these questions, the Italian navy is sending down six divers from its elite Comsubin unit, the equivalent of the British Special Boat Service, a source close to the investigation told the Times.
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch with his wife Angela Bacares, who survived the Bayesian disaster but could now be targeted by HPE pursuing their £3billion lawsuit
Tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, who died in August, pictured at his Suffolk farm
Hannah Lynch, the 18-year-old daughter of tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch
The elite divers will be searching for electronic equipment, including CCTV and data storage, and looking to see if doors were left open at the time of the sinking.
The trip which ended in tragedy had been part of Mr Lynch’s celebrations with family and friends after he was acquitted in a San Francisco court earlier this year of fraud and conspiracy charges.
Mr Lynch had potentially faced up to 20 years in a US prison if found guilty of 16 counts of conspiracy, and securities and wire fraud, which he denied.
The charges related to a business deal that was hailed at the time as his crowning glory – the £8.6billion sale of his software and data company Autonomy to US computer giant Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
Mr Lynch personally made more than £500million from the deal, only for HP to later wrote down three-quarters of the value of Autonomy only a year after buying it.
The US company fired Mr Lynch while accusing accusing him and other executives of having grossly inflated its size and profits during the sale.
He had previously lost a 2019 civil fraud case based on similar allegations that HP – now Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) – brought in the UK, with London’s High Court ruling in 2020 that HPE had ‘substantially won’ its case.
His separate three-year battle to avoid being extradited to face criminal charges culminated in Lynch going to the High Court to argue that American prosecutors were guilty of legal overreach which threatened UK sovereignty and its citizens.
Mike Lynch when he was managing director of the Autonomy corporation which developed software for the web
Mr Lynch at Autonomy’s headquarters at Cambridge Business Park in 2000
His plea was rejected and in May last year he was flown to California, accompanied by the U.S. Marshals Service, still protesting his innocence.
And on June 6 this year he was acquitted of fraud by a jury in San Francisco, while former Autonomy finance executive Stephen Chamberlain, who faced the same charges, was also acquitted on all counts.
In his first interview after the charges were rejected, Mr Lynch told how he had feared he would die in prison – saying that medical issues meant he felt it would have been ‘difficult to survive’ time behind bars.
Mr Lynch and his wife are thought to have lived for the last 15 years at their Georgian manor house in Suffolk, with a farm set in 69 acres of grounds and woodland alongside 2,500 acres of mainly arable farmland.
DIY INVESTING PLATFORMS
AJ Bell
AJ Bell
Easy investing and ready-made portfolios
Hargreaves Lansdown
Hargreaves Lansdown
Free fund dealing and investment ideas
interactive investor
interactive investor
Flat-fee investing from £4.99 per month
Saxo
Saxo
Get £200 back in trading fees
Trading 212
Trading 212
Free dealing and no account fee
Affiliate links: If you take out a product This is Money may earn a commission. These deals are chosen by our editorial team, as we think they are worth highlighting. This does not affect our editorial independence.
Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence.
