A UK court Tuesday awarded £700 million ($946 million) compensation to IT agency Hewlett Packard in a fraud case involving late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, killed final 12 months when his superyacht sank off Sicily.
A UK court dominated in 2022 in favour of the U.S. know-how large, now often called Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), in a civil case linked to the sale of Lynch’s firm, Autonomy.
Lynch, as soon as dubbed the “British Bill Gates”, based software program agency Autonomy in the Nineteen Nineties. Its $11 billion sale to Hewlett Packard in 2011 additionally noticed him face fraud costs in the United States.
HP accused Autonomy of artificially inflating its revenues and development earlier than the sale and had demanded $5 billion in compensation.
“We are pleased that this decision brings us a step closer to the resolution of this dispute,” stated a spokesperson for Hewlett Packard.
“We look forward to the further hearing at which the final amount of HPE’s damages will be determined,” they added.
The additional listening to, coping with issues together with curiosity, foreign money conversion and whether or not Lynch’s property can enchantment the choice, is scheduled for November.
The British court had not but awarded damages when Lynch was killed alongside together with his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, 4 mates and the yacht’s prepare dinner in the sinking of his British-flagged vessel Bayesian in a storm in August 2024.
Lynch, 59, his household and friends have been on board celebrating his acquittal in the large U.S. fraud case.
The 56-metre (185-foot) yacht was struck by a mini-tornado earlier than daybreak because it was anchored off Porticello, close to Palermo.
Hewlett Packard had recorded almost $9 billion in write-downs, together with greater than $5 billion it claimed resulted from accounting manipulations by Autonomy’s administrators earlier than the sale.
But justice Robert Hildyard in the British case wrote in his ruling that “HP’s claim was always substantially exaggerated”.
The preliminary compensation award had been anticipated in September 2024, and earlier than his sudden dying Lynch had ready a written response to the judgement.
The ruling “exposes HP’s failure and makes clear that the immense damage to Autonomy was down to HP’s own errors and actions”, he wrote, including that the corporate would contemplate interesting the choice.
A spokesman instructed AFP any money owed would have to be discharged from Lynch’s property.
