Mike Lynch, the billionaire tech entrepreneur who died in a yacht accident that took seven lives on Aug. 19, was once a high-profile figure in the U.K. A colorful character and self-made businessman, his recent testimony in a U.S. legal battle may shed some light on a controversial tech leader with a nearly unbelievable rags-to-riches story.
Lynch was the cofounder and former CEO of Autonomy, a software firm he sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2011, in what became a much-criticized deal for the tech giant. HP had to write down $8.8 billion of the $11 billion price paid and later accused Lynch and other top executives of conspiring to defraud the company and falsifying documents to inflate the value of the firm.
