Hewlett-Packard has won its six-year civil fraud case against Mike Lynch, the man once hailed as Britain’s answer to Bill Gates, after a high court judge ruled that he duped the US firm into paying £8.2bn for his software firm Autonomy.
Lynch, who was on Friday waiting to find out if he could be extradited to the US to face a separate criminal trial, was found to have defrauded HP by manipulating Autonomy’s accounts to inflate the value of the company. He has always denied the accusation and said on Friday that he would appeal.