As billionaire Mike Lynch's family continues to grieve his death, and that of six others, after his superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily on Aug. 19, they have another ongoing issue to contend with. People reports that Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which had sued Lynch for fraud after he sold his Autonomy business software firm to them in 2011 for $11 billion, plans to proceed with a 2015 complaint against Lynch. "It is HPE's intention to follow the proceedings through to their conclusion," the company said in a statement on the suit, which seeks damages of up to $4 billion from Lynch's estate.
This means that Lynch's widow, Angela Bacares, who survived the yacht's sinking along with 14 others, now inherits the complaint and could be liable for damages that HP seeks. Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, and others were aboard the Bayesian to celebrate Lynch's recent US acquittal in a separate criminal case related to the 2011 sale. HP won a seven-year-long civil suit against Lynch and his former CFO, Sushovan Hussain, in 2022, claiming Lynch had overvalued Autonomy by billions before selling it to them. The last damages hearing in that case was in February.
The New York Times reports that Lynch had planned to appeal the decision. Not everyone agrees that Hewlett Packard is making the right move. "Legally they are obliged to act in their shareholders' best interests, but morally continuing the claim is questionable," attorney Oliver Embley tells the Guardian. "And from a publicity perspective it could backfire on them. Effectively they would be suing his widow, and that does not look good optically." Charles Elson, founding director of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, says he believes HP would be shielded from a shareholders' suit if the firm dropped its complaint against Lynch's estate. (More Bayesian sinking stories.)
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