Brit tycoon’s bad Friday just got worse
UK Home Secretary Priti Patel tonight approved Autonomy founder Mike Lynch’s extradition to America to face criminal charges over the multi-billion-dollar sale of his tech startup to Hewlett-Packard. The British businessman is wanted in the United States to stand trial on 17 charges of fraud and false accounting. American prosecutors claim Lynch overstated his firm’s value and cheated Hewlett Packard investors when he sold his firm Autonomy to the US IT giant in 2011 for $11bn – an acquisition that led to a staggering $8.8bn writedown by HP the following year. Lynch denies any wrongdoing. After Uncle Sam indicted Lynch in 2018 and sought to extradite the tech tycoon from the UK to put him on trial, Hewlett Packard Enterprise sued him and Autonomy’s ex-CFO Sushovan Hussain in England, seeking to recoup billions of pounds in damages and accusing the pair of fraudulently cooking the books at the startup to secure that fateful acquisition.
