A High Court judge has ordered the estate of Mike Lynch to pay Hewlett Packard £920m in damages — a ruling that would leave the late tech entrepreneur's estate bankrupt and means the software boss would be expected to pass nothing to his widow and surviving daughter, unless the ruling is successfully appealed. The judgment lands less than a year after Lynch and his daughter Hannah died when his superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily — a disaster from which Angela Bacares, Lynch's wife, was among the 15 survivors.
The ruling marks the conclusion of one of Britain's most drawn-out and emotionally charged legal sagas. Lynch and Hannah died in August 2024 when the Bayesian sank during a powerful storm, with 22 people on board. The family had gathered aboard the vessel to celebrate Lynch's acquittal on fraud charges in the United States, a victory that lasted only weeks before tragedy struck.
