Lynch estate wins Court of Appeal bid to challenge $1.2bn HPE fraud ruling

The estate of Mike Lynch has been granted permission to appeal part of the $1.2bn judgment in favour of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise over the Autonomy acquisition.

Lynch estate clears appeal hurdle in HPE's $1.2bn Autonomy fraud case

The estate of the late tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch has secured the right to challenge part of the ruling ordering it to pay Hewlett-Packard Enterprise more than $1.2 billion over the 2011 acquisition of software firm Autonomy, The Independent reports.

Lady Justice Asplin granted four of 14 grounds of appeal last week, according to court documents. One strand of the appeal will examine whether Lynch was aware of improper accounting at Autonomy at the time of the deal.

A spokesperson for the Lynch family welcomed the decision. "The questions to be heard confirm what Mr Lynch always maintained: that HP's claim was wildly exaggerated and HP's losses stemmed overwhelmingly from its own conduct after the acquisition," the family said in a statement.

The case has its roots in HPE's $11.1 billion (£8.2 billion) purchase of Cambridge-based Autonomy in 2011. Four years later, in 2015, HPE sued Lynch for around $5 billion (£3.79 billion), alleging he had inflated Autonomy's revenues and "committed a deliberate fraud over a sustained period of time" — conduct it said forced an $8.8 billion (£6.5 billion) write-down of the firm's value little more than a year after the takeover.

At a nine-month trial in 2019, then considered the UK's largest civil fraud case, Mr Justice Hildyard found in 2022 that HPE had "substantially succeeded" in its claim, though he indicated damages would likely fall "substantially" short of the full amount sought. He acknowledged that Autonomy had not accurately represented its financial position, while also noting that HPE would have proceeded with the acquisition regardless — albeit at a lower price.

Earlier this year the same judge ordered Lynch's estate to pay a total of $1,235,129,122 (£911.8 million) and refused it permission to appeal both his 2022 ruling and a second judgment from July 2025 that found HPE's losses amounted to around £700 million.

Lynch died in August 2024 at the age of 59 when his superyacht, the Bayesian, sank off the coast of Sicily. His 18-year-old daughter Hannah and five others also perished in the disaster. The Court of Appeal's decision to allow four grounds to proceed means the legal battle over Autonomy — one of the most complex commercial disputes in British legal history — is set to continue.

Source: The Independent