Mike Lynch, a tech tycoon, who drowned when his luxury yacht capsized off Sicily spent over a decade creating Britain's largest software company. He also fought for almost the same amount of time against charges that he inflated its value to get a multibillion-pound deal.

Massimo Mariani, an official with the Interior Ministry, confirmed that Lynch's corpse was recovered from the wreckage of Monday's tragedy on Thursday.

Lynch founded Autonomy from groundbreaking research at Cambridge University in 1996. Shareholders, business leaders, and politicians praised him when he sold the company to Hewlett-Packard 15 years later for $11 billion. HP shocked Wall Street and City of London in late 2012 when it announced that they had uncovered a massive accounting fraud. Lynch denied these charges.

HP wrote down $8.8 billion in value, triggering 12 years of courtroom battles from London to San Francisco.

Lynch, who was known as Britain's Bill Gates, became known for his impressive intelligence. He turned his cutting-edge research from academia into a tech company worth billions of pounds.

He didn't shy away from criticizing his company, including Oracle's Larry Ellison on one occasion. He also played a key role in building up his defence.

He invited journalists to a room with a neatly stacked stack of documents from the company, where they were briefed about its financials.

HP was attracted to Autonomy because of its ability to search for and organize unstructured data on behalf of clients. This killer application, in an age of limitless data, existed before advanced artificial intelligence.

Lynch received approximately $800 million in return for his Autonomy stake.

Theorem A: Bays

Autonomy’s software uses patented algorithms that are based on an 18th Century mathematical formula created by Reverend Thomas Bayes. Lynch named his yacht, which sank in the Mediterranean Sea, the Bayesian as a reference to the mathematical formula.

HP sued Lynch for $5 billion in London's High Court. Lynch spent 22 days as a witness, making it one of the UK's longest cross-examinations. In 2022, HP won a large part of the civil case after the judge determined that Lynch and his colleague fraudulently concealed "fire sales" of hardware by engaging in convoluted schemes of reselling to conceal a shortage in sales of Autonomy software. The civil case has yet to decide on damages.

Lynch was then facing extradition to the U.S. for criminal charges, including conspiracy and wire fraud. If found guilty, he would have faced decades of jail time.

He testified in San Francisco, in his own defense. He denied any wrongdoings and told jurors HP had botched its integration of the acquisition.

He said, "Autonomy is an extremely successful business." Lynch was freed from house arrest after one year in June, when he was acquitted of all charges. He was "elated," and looked forward to returning home to his family in Suffolk, England. There, he kept a herd rare-breed cows and dogs.

Lynch invited his supporters to sail around southern Italy on his 56 metre (184 foot) yacht as part of his celebration. His lawyer and a Morgan Stanley executive, who appeared as a witness in the case, were among his guests.

The boat, with its sails down at anchor, was quickly sunk by a violent thunderstorm that hit it before dawn Monday.

The wife of the man who died survived, but their daughter was still missing on Thursday. Four other bodies had been recovered by then. The chef of the ship was found dead just hours after it sank.

UK TECH CHAMPION

Lynch was raised in Chelmsford, near London. He said that his parents, who were a nurse, and a fireman instilled a value for education in him.

He studied signal processing at Cambridge University after studying physics, maths and biochemistry. Local media reported that his thesis was still one of most consulted at the university library.

He founded Autonomy back in 1996, and used the proceeds of its sale to champion UK technology. His venture capital company Invoke has backed Darktrace - a British cybersecurity firm that is in the process to be sold to U.S. firm Thoma Bravo, for $5.32billion - and other tech companies.

The father of two daughters, who is married, was eager to share his knowledge.

He was also a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the British Library and the BBC, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society. He vowed, after his acquittal to continue to fight against the extradition agreement between Britain and the United States. British critics had long criticized the treaty as being too one-sided.

He said: "You should not need money to protect yourself if you are a British national".

(source: Reuters)