Yui Mok/PA
British tech mogul Mike in 2019.
Autonomy founder Mike Lynch was acquitted of fraud charges by a San Francisco jury on Thursday, a major win for the software entrepreneur, who has been dogged by legal troubles since his 2011 sale to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion.
Lynch’s attorneys and U.S. prosecutors said he was acquitted of all 15 charges, including one conspiracy count and 14 counts of wire fraud.
Stephen Chamberlain, a former Autonomy financial executive who faced the same charges at trial as Lynch, was also acquitted of all charges, Lynch’s attorneys said.
The trial, in which prosecutors allege Messrs. Lynch and Chamberlain conspired to inflate Autonomy’s revenue, was the latest chapter in a legal battle that grew out of the failed deal.
The sale of Autonomy was one of the UK’s largest technology deals at the time, but it quickly fell apart and HP wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8 billion within a year.
“I am overjoyed by today’s sentence,” Lynch, who was once compared to Apple’s Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, said in a statement. “I look forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field.”
“We acknowledge and respect the sentence,” U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Abraham Simmons said.
During the trial, which lasted three months, jurors heard testimony from more than 30 government witnesses, including former HP (HPE) CEO Leo Apotheker, who was fired just weeks after the Autonomy deal was announced.
Cambridge University graduate Lynch took the stand in his own defense at trial, denied any wrongdoing, and told jurors that HP had failed to integrate the two companies.
Prosecutors said Lynch and Chamberlain inflated Autonomy’s finances in a variety of ways, including backdated agreements and false contracts.
Lynch’s lawyers argued at trial that HP was eager to acquire Autonomy before potential competitors and therefore rushed to complete its due diligence before the sale.
On the stand, the entrepreneur said he focused on technology issues and left money matters and the accounting decisions in question to Autonomy’s then-Chief Financial Officer, Sushoban Hussain, who was separately convicted in 2018 at the same court on charges related to the HP deal and was released from a U.S. prison in January after serving a five-year sentence.
Lynch used his groundbreaking research at Cambridge University to found Autonomy, which has become the UK’s largest software company and a constituent of the blue-chip FTSE 100 index.
He was praised by academics and scientists and was asked to advise the British government on technology and innovation. The Autonomy acquisition was meant to revitalize HP’s software business, but instead it spawned a series of bitter and expensive legal battles. HP largely won a civil lawsuit against Lynch and Hussain in London in 2022, but damages have yet to be determined. The company is seeking $4 billion.
