Mike Lynch, former CEO of Autonomy.
Hollie Adams | Bloomberg by the use of Getty Pictures
LONDON — British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch is ready to be extradited to the USA to stand felony fees associated with the sale of his corporate Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard, after a ruling made via U.Okay. inner minister Priti Patel.
Lynch bought his device start-up Autonomy to HP in 2011 for $11.7 billion.
Twelve months later, HP introduced an $8.8 billion writedown at the corporate, claiming that “accounting irregularities” led it to pay an excessive amount of for the company.
Previous Friday, a British pass judgement on dominated in prefer of HP in a civil case in opposition to Lynch over claims he plotted to inflate the price of Autonomy sooner than it was once purchased via HP.HP gained nearly all of the fees, Justice Robert Hildyard stated, even though the damages can be considerably less than the $5 billion sought via the corporate.
On Friday, the U.Okay. House Workplace stated it had determined to approve U S. calls for to have Lynch extradited. Patel had till middle of the night to make the verdict. Lynch, who denies the allegations, can enchantment the ruling. His legal professionals say he plans to take action.
Lynch, 56, had previously won a name as some of the U.Okay.’s maximum a success tech marketers. He was once as soon as described within the U.Okay. press as “Britain’s Invoice Gates.”
However claims that Lynch artificially inflated the price of his corporate sooner than sealing its takeover via HP have in large part tarnished that symbol.
U.S. government need him to stand fees of securities and twine fraud in the case of the HP-Autonomy deal. Closing yr, a pass judgement on stated Lynch must be extradited to the U.S. and gave Patel two months to approve the order.
The scoop is more likely to solid a cloud over Darktrace, the U.Okay. cybersecurity company that Lynch has a stake in. A number of executives at Darktrace up to now labored for Autonomy. For its section, Darktrace says Lynch isn’t concerned within the day by day operations of the company.
Darktrace indexed in London final yr and stocks of the corporate have since climbed 60%. Its debut was once observed as a key victory within the U.Okay.’s bid to draw extra high-growth tech start-ups to checklist within the nation after its withdrawal from the Eu Union.
