Who is Mike Lynch, the ‘British Bill Gates’ missing at sea?

Lynch founded Autonomy from his ground-breaking research at Cambridge University in 1996

• Pramod Thomas
• 20 August, 2024

By: Pramod Thomas

MIKE LYNCH, the tech tycoon missing after his luxury yacht sank off Sicily, spent more than a decade building the country’s biggest software company and then almost as long again fighting fraud charges related to its multi-billion pound sale.

Lynch founded Autonomy from his ground-breaking research at Cambridge University in 1996, and was lauded by shareholders, scientists and politicians when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion (£8.5bn) 15 years later.

But in late 2012, HP stunned Wall Street and the City of London by alleging a massive accounting scandal at the business, and writing off $8.8bn (£6.8bn) of its value.

Lynch, known for an abrasive intellectual charm, said HP did not know what it was doing with Autonomy, which searched and organised data using patented algorithms based on a mathematics developed in the 18th Century by Reverend Thomas Bayes.

He spent the next 12 years in courts trying to clear his name, locked in some of the biggest legal battles in corporate history.

HP pursued Lynch in London’s High Court for $5bn (£3.8bn). It won most of its case in 2022 and is still awaiting the award of damages.

The judge found that Lynch and another colleague had fraudulently concealed a “fire sale” of hardware and engaged in convoluted reselling schemes to mask a shortfall in sales of Autonomy’s software, the business HP coveted.

US authorities filed criminal charges including wire fraud and conspiracy against Lynch and sought his extradition.

The British government came under pressure from Lynch’s supporters to block the application. If found guilty, Lynch could have faced decades in jail.

But the appeals failed, and Lynch took the stand in San Francisco in his own defence, where he denied wrongdoing and told jurors that HP had botched the integration of Autonomy.

He was acquitted on all charges and freed after a year under house arrest. Lynch said he was “elated”.

“I am looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field,” he said.

Lynch was born in 1965 and was raised in Chelmsford near London where his mother was a nurse and his father a fireman. He said his parents instilled in him an appreciation of the value of education.

At Cambridge University, he studied physics, mathematics and biochemistry, and went on to research signal processing for his doctorate. His thesis is still one of the most widely consulted in the university’s library, reports have said.

In 1996, Lynch founded Autonomy which searched and organised complex data such as emails, phones calls and video.

Lynch, who has a herd of rare breed cattle on his estate in Suffolk, East England, used some of the proceeds of the sale of Autonomy to set up venture capital firm Invoke.

It was a major backer of Darktrace, a British cyber security company that US firm Thoma Bravo agreed to buy for $5.32bn (£4bn)  in cash in April.

Search resumes for six missing

Rescue teams in Sicily resumed a search for six missing people, including Lynch and his daughter, after a luxury yacht was struck by a violent storm and sank on Monday, killing one on board.

The British-flagged “Bayesian,” a 56-metre-long (184-ft) sailboat was carrying 22 people and was anchored just off the port of Porticello when it was hit by ferocious weather.

Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance who represented Lynch in a US trial, were among the missing.

The wives of both men were also unaccounted for, said Salvatore Cocina, head of civil protection in Sicily.

“The fear is that the bodies got trapped inside the vessel,” he said.

Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation into the incident.

Specialist divers had reached the ship on Monday at a depth of some 50 metres, but access was limited due to objects in the way, the fire brigade said.

Fifteen people had escaped before the boat went down, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, who owned the boat, and a one-year-old girl.

On Monday, rescue teams recovered the body of the yacht’s onboard chef, identified as Antiguan citizen Ricardo Thomas.

Storms and heavy rainfall have swept Italy in recent days, after weeks of scorching heat lifted the temperature of the Mediterranean sea to record levels, raising the risk of extreme weather conditions, experts said.

The British government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch said four inspectors had been sent to Sicily to conduct a “preliminary assessment.”

One expert at the scene of the disaster who declined to be named said an early focus of the investigation would be whether the yacht’s crew had had time to close access hatches into the vessel before the storm struck.

(Agencies)