Estate of late tycoon Mike Lynch to pay damages of £920m

The estate of the late tech tycoon Mike Lynch must pay Hewlett-Packard an estimated $1.24bn (£930m) in damages for the acquisition of his Cambridge-based company, a High Court judge has ruled.

In a ruling on Tuesday, Mr Justice Hildyard said Hewlett-Packard (HP) was owed damages and interest for the £8.2bn purchase of his software firm Autonomy in 2011.

A spokesperson for the Lynch family said they were "disappointed by the court's refusal and believe an application to the Court of Appeal should follow in the interests of justice".

HP sued Mr Lynch for about $5bn (£3.79bn) following its purchase of Autonomy for $11.1bn (£8.2bn) in 2011.

The company claimed at a nine-month trial in 2019 - then believed to be the UK's biggest civil fraud trial - that Mr Lynch inflated Autonomy's revenues and "committed a deliberate fraud over a sustained period of time".

The estate had sought to challenge the judge's 2022 decision that HP had "substantially won" its fraud claim against Mr Lynch.

It also asked for the green light to appeal against Hillyard's ruling in July last year that found Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) suffered losses amounting to around £700m through the purchase of Autonomy.

Hildyard has refused Lynch's estate permission to appeal Tuesday's ruling or earlier judgments in the case.

In a 2019 trial, HPE had accused Lynch of inflating Autonomy's revenues which it said forced it to announce an $8.8bn write-down of the company's worth.

In 2022, Hildyard said the American firm had "substantially succeeded" in its claim, but that it was likely to receive "substantially less" than the amount it claimed in damages.

He said that Autonomy, founded by Mr Lynch, had not accurately portrayed its financial position during the purchase, but even if it had, HPE would still have bought the company, but at a reduced price.

In written submissions for the hearing in November 2025, Patrick Goodall KC, for HPE, said Mr Lynch had "not only perpetrated an enormous fraud, but lied about it at every stage", and an appeal "aimed at escaping the consequences of that fraud" should not be allowed.

Richard Hill, the lawyer representing Lynch's estate, said in written submissions that the $761m in interest sought by the claimants was an "excessive sum... based on a flawed analysis".

University of Cambridge graduate Lynch co-founded Autonomy in 1996 out of a specialist software research group called Cambridge Neurodynamics.

He led it as it grew to be one of the UK's biggest companies, winning him comparisons to Microsoft's Bill Gates and Apple's Steve Jobs.

The sale of the company, known for software that could extract useful information from "unstructured" sources such as phone calls, emails or video, was ranked as the largest-ever takeover of a British technology business at the time.

Lynch was extradited to the US in 2023 to face criminal charges, and was cleared of fraud in 2024 - just weeks before his death.

A spokesperson for the Lynch family said: "We are disappointed by the court's refusal and believe an application to the Court of Appeal should follow in the interests of justice.

"HP's five billion dollar damages claim has already been shown to be vastly exaggerated.

"Today's judgment describes the exaggeration as 'without foundation' and the purposes for which it was 'calibrated, publicised and pursued' as objectionable, misleading shareholders and extending the litigation unnecessarily.

"Dr Lynch's acquittal in the US, where witnesses were properly cross-examined, exposed the truth.

"The damage to Autonomy was the result of HP's own actions and failures, not wrongdoing at Autonomy."