Image source, Getty Images
- author, Natalie Sherman
- role, BBC News
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has appeared in a US court to fight allegations that he committed fraud to inflate the value of his company before its 2011 sale to Hewlett-Packard.
He told jurors he had no involvement in the transactions described in the trial and reportedly viewed the trial as “surreal.”
Lynch co-founded the software company Autonomy in 1996, which grew to become one of the UK's largest companies.
The entrepreneur, who has previously been compared to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors in San Francisco have been questioning witnesses for weeks, hoping to convince jurors of their case.
They allege that Mr Lynch was the “driving force” behind a scheme to backdate contracts and use other tactics to inflate the value of the company, which was eventually sold for more than $11 billion (£8.6 billion).
At the time, the deal was described as the largest ever acquisition by a British technology company.
Just a year later, HP wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8 billion.
HP claimed it had been duped into paying large sums of money to the company, known for its software that can extract useful information from “unstructured” sources such as phone calls, emails and videos.
Lynch's team alleges that HP failed to properly vet the deal.
The company has also sought to distance Lynch from other executives, including its former chief financial officer, who has already been indicted on fraud charges.
Under questioning from lawyers on Thursday, Lynch said the company is focused on technology and marketing and leaves the numbers to others.
He argued that the business was complex, saying, “If you take a microscope to a clean kitchen, you'll find germs.”
Lynch, a former British government adviser and trustee of the BBC and the British Library, fiercely resisted attempts to put him on trial in the United States.
He was ultimately extradited after a British judge ruled in favor of HP in a similar civil fraud case in 2022. HP is reportedly seeking $4 billion in damages in the case.
In addition to Lynch, Autonomy's former financial director, Stephen Chamberlain, is also on trial.
