The sinking of a superyacht during a storm off Sicily last week that took the life of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch brings to light his legacy, which includes a question of ethics in accounting. That topic was central to federal fraud charges that Lynch faced in relation to the sale of his software company Autonomy to the U.S. tech giant Hewlett Packard. He was acquitted in a San Francisco courtroom earlier this year.
Lynch was known as the “British Bill Gates” and was the founder and CEO of Autonomy. But following the company’s acquisition by HP in 2011 for $11.1 billion, HP would accuse Lynch and other corporate executives of cooking the books. Lynch was acquitted in June but his former CFO Sushovan Hussain was earlier sent to jail for five years, and in July, he was banned from accounting until 2038.
