Tech tycoon on trial Autonomy founder musters defence for US fraud case

Mike Lynch, the technology tycoon once labelled Britain’s Bill Gates, has spent the past 10 months in San Francisco, with a GPS bracelet strapped to his ankle and two armed guards monitoring him around the clock. This week he heads to court to face a long, hard fight for his freedom.

- Callum Jones

It’s been 13 years since one of Silicon Valley’s IT multinationals bought Lynch’s business in a blockbuster takeover that seemed to confirm his image as one of Britain’s most brilliant technologists. Now that deal is at the centre of a criminal fraud trial. If convicted, Lynch could spend up to 25 years in jail.

It has been a stunning fall from grace. As co-founder of Autonomy, a software firm that became one of the shining lights of the British tech scene, Lynch was lauded for his achievements in business, awarded an OBE for services to enterprise in 2006, and appointed in 2011 to the science and technology council of then prime minister David Cameron. He served on the board of the BBC, and established an investment firm that backed Darktrace, the cybersecurity firm.

Now Lynch will try to persuade a jury that the highlight of his career – Autonomy’s acquisition by Hewlett -Packard – was not built on lies.

US federal prosecutors have a fearsome record and most defendants would rather plead guilty than go to trial. Last year, analysis by the Pew Research Center found that, of 71,954 defendants in federal criminal cases in 2022, only 2.3% went to trial. Just 0.4% were acquitted. Lynch has pleaded not guilty .

Attention in the courtroom is likely to turn swiftly to an afternoon in August 2011. Ten minutes after Wall Street closed for the day, HP – then t he world’s largest maker of personal computers – revealed its plan to transform from hardware manufacturer to a software giant. The snag was that software was responsible for only 3% of its sales.