The CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise said the company has a “fiduciary duty” to seek a civil judgment against a billionaire British tech tycoon who drowned along with his daughter and several companions when their luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily last month.
Antonio Neri successfully sued Mike Lynch for fraud in the sale of his software company to HPE in 2011. He told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.“Fundamentally, we believe what has happened is not in the best interests of shareholders and we need to see it through.”
HPE asked a British judge to award $4 billion in damages after the High Court ruled that Lynch and former financial chief Sushovan Hussain falsified the books of now-disbanded software company Autonomy Corp. before the company was bought in 2011 for $11.7 billion.
HPE's acquisition of Autonomy makes Lynch one of Britain's richest tycoons.
But less than a year after the deal, HPE announced it was writing down the value of Autonomy by $8.8 billion, $5 billion of which it claims was due to accounting irregularities.
Lynch and Hussain have denied the allegations.
Hussain was ultimately convicted of wire fraud and securities fraud and sentenced to five years in a U.S. federal prison.
HPE filed suit against Lynch in what became one of the most expensive and protracted legal battles in British history.
In 2022, the High Court ruled in HPE's favor.
The company is seeking $4 billion in damages, but a judge said that amount may be too high.
A decision is expected by the end of the year.
“HPE intends to follow through on the process,” the company said in a statement last week, just days after Lynch's body was recovered from the ocean floor off the coast of Italy.
Earlier this year, Lynch, often referred to in the British press as the “British Bill Gates,” was acquitted by a federal jury in San Francisco of more than 10 charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy, related to allegations that he tried to inflate Autonomy's sales figures.
On August 19, Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, and 22 other people on board the superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of the Sicilian town of Porticello after being hit by a powerful tornado before dawn.
Lynch, his daughter and five others died, but his wife, Angela Bacalez, and 14 others, including a one-year-old child, managed to escape before the boat ran aground and made it safely to shore.
Last week, HPE told British newspaper The Telegraph it still intended to collect damages from Lynch's heirs, despite public perception that the $33.43 billion company had shown insensitivity to the grieving family.
Lynch and his daughter are survived by his wife, Bakales, and another daughter who was not on the ill-fated yacht.
“It was a sad situation,” Neri said of the tragic death, adding: “Once the judge proceeds with the case, we will come together again and wait to see what happens next.”
