Fraud claims made against UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s were ‘plucked from the air’, court told
A judge has been urged to dismiss ‘manufactured’ fraud claims against Mike Lynch as the British tech tycoon’s trial comes to a close.
The 54-year-old founder of software group Autonomy is accused of artificially inflating his company’s value before it was sold to Hewlett Packard (HP) for £9billion in 2011.
But in the High Court yesterday, Lynch’s lawyers told Mr Justice Hildyard the ‘mishmash’ of allegations against their client lacked ‘merit and realism’.
Trial: Mike Lynch, the 54-year-old founder of software group Autonomy, is accused of artificially inflating his company’s value before it was sold to Hewlett Packard for £9bn
They said: ‘Before HP even completed its purchase of Autonomy, HP’s board experienced buyer’s remorse. The integration of Autonomy was mishandled.
‘Since then, HP has been engaged on a witch hunt.’
Now called HP Enterprise (HPE), it says Lynch oversaw efforts to fraudulently inflate Autonomy’s value, for example by selling hardware at a loss and booking the transactions as software sales.
It has also accused him of giving contradictory or dishonest evidence. HPE’s lawyers claimed he told ‘lie after lie’ during the trial.
Robert Miles QC, for Lynch, however, questioned HP’s £4billion damages claim.
He said: ‘The figure was arbitrary and effectively plucked from the air. There was no basis for it.’