Divers recovered the body of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch on Thursday, confirming the worst fears after his superyacht sank off the Italian coast on Monday. The tragic accident resurfaced Lynch’s controversial career, which saw the tycoon cleared of fraud charges in a U.S. federal court in June related to the sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard.
Darktrace, a U.K. cybersecurity company that counted Lynch as one of its founding investors, has also faced renewed attention as it seeks to finalize its acquisition by U.S. private equity firm Thoma Bravo, a top software investor, for more than $5 billion. While Darktrace’s stock has soared in recent months, the company was the subject of a short-seller campaign in early 2023 that accused Darktrace of committing similar fraud and accounting wrongdoing that plagued Autonomy. No wrongdoing was ever proven, and at the time, Darktrace’s CEO issued a statement defending the company from “unfounded inferences.”
