Mike Lynch: the rise and fall of the extradited tech tycoon
As Mike Lynch adjusts to life confined to a court-approved address in San Francisco, watched by armed guards as he awaits trial for criminal fraud, the tech tycoon once lauded as Britain’s Bill Gates will have plenty of time to contemplate his spectacular fall from grace.
The 57-year-old, stripped of all travel documents and accompanied by US Marshals to court after being extradited to the US on Thursday, is facing up to 25 years in prison if he is found guilty of allegations he duped Hewlett-Packard into overpaying when it struck an $11bn deal (£8.2bn) deal for his software firm Autonomy in 2011.
Lynch’s former finance director at Autonomy, Sushovan Hussain, is already serving time in jail in the US after being found guilty of fraud relating to the deal, and last year Lynch lost a six-year civil fraud case brought by HP in the UK. Lynch has always denied the allegations of wrongdoing. Regardless of the outcome of his San Francisco trial, it marks an ignominious end to the feted career and reputation of a man once hailed as one of Britain’s fe w global tech champions.
Before HP cried foul over the takeover deal, which made Lynch about £500m, Autonomy’s co-founder was revered for the success of his venture, which along with chip designer Arm was one of the leading lights in the cluster of tech firms around Cambridge known as Silicon Fen.
Having received an OBE for services to enterprise in 2006, the same year he was appointed to the BBC’s board, Lynch would go on to be elected to David Cameron’s council for science and technology in 2011.
Lynch supposedly offered the then prime minister advice on matters including “the opportunities and risks of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and the government’s role in the
Read more on theguardian.com
