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Hewlett Packard HPQ+1.15% (HP) will continue its lawsuit in the United Kingdom against the late British billionaire Mike Lynch, who died last month when his superyacht sank in the Mediterranean.
HP claimed it lost more than $4 billion when it acquired British software firm Autonomy thanks to a fraud engineered by Lynch, the company’s co-founder. Lynch denied the accusations.
“It is HPE’s intention to follow the proceedings through to their conclusion,” the company, which is now seeking the money from Lynch’s estate, told Reuters.
HP bought Lynch’s Autonomy in 2011 for $11.1 billion, but said the following year that Autonomy was worth billions of dollars less. It sued Lynch, winning a civil case against him in 2022 — but the amount of damages the company is owed has yet to be determined. The company also sued Lynch in U.S. criminal court, where he was found not guilty in June.
Lynch was on his super yacht, the Bayesian, off the coast of Sicily last month to celebrate his acquittal in US court when the boat was hit by a storm and sank.
Lynch and six others, including his daughter, died in the accident. Fifteen people survived.