Hewlett Packard (HP) has backed down in a legal battle against the family of Mike Lynch amid a row over his £500million fortune.
The American tech giant has been seeking almost a billion pounds from Lynch’s estate that was awarded in a row that began long before he died in the sinking of his yacht, the Bayesian.
It tried earlier this year to oust the new manager of the assets – Jeremy Sandelson, a former partner at Lynch’s law firm – and replace him with a restructuring company, against the wishes of the grieving family.
But HP has now agreed to allow Mr Sandelson to continue in his role – despite previously arguing he would be biased in favour of the family.
Lynch – one of Britain’s most successful ever tech entrepreneurs – died alongside his teenage daughter Hannah and five others when his 72-metre yacht capsized and sank off the Sicilian coast in August 2024.
For years, he had been embroiled in a high-stakes legal battle with HP over the sale of his software company, Autonomy.
HP paid £8.3billion for it in 2011, but later claimed Lynch had defrauded them by falsely inflating the true value of his company.
He was found liable in 2022, and a High Court judge ruled his estate should pay HP £920million.
Mike Lynch, pictured with his daughter Hannah, died when his yacht sank off the coast of Sicily
The Bayesian was pulled up from the seabed in June 2025, after spending almost a year down underwater
Lynch had also faced the prospect of criminal prosecution, but was found not guilty by a jury in June 2024, just two months before his death.
He was on holiday celebrating that verdict with his family when the freak storm struck.
Mr Sandelson has managed Lynch’s estate since the tragedy, but HP objected to the arrangement.
At a court hearing in April, the company’s lawyers argued that Mr Sandelson had a ‘fundamental and irreconcilable’ conflict of interest, born from his close ties to the family.
HP wanted instead to install the restructuring firm Interpath Advisory, which it felt would be more impartial.
The company said the manager of the estate would inevitably end up probing the finances of Lynch’s widow, Angela Bacares, to assess whether her own assets could be used to pay what is owed.
The £920million is almost twice the value of Lynch’s entire estate, so alternative sources would be required to make up the full sum.
The late tycoon’s family are currently awaiting a decision on whether the fraud ruling can be appealed.
An agreement has now been reached that Mr Sandelson will continue to manage the estate if permission is granted, but Interpath will take over if the bid fails.
Stephen Chamberlain, a co-defendant in Lynch’s fraud case, died in a car crash just two days before the tech tycoon
In May, Italian investigators said the Bayesian’s crew were to blame for it sinking – rather than the storm.
Prosecutors appointed experts to look at whether a freak weather event – described by witnesses as a ‘tornado’ – was responsible for the tragedy.
However, the report found it amounted to ‘little more than a squall, a sudden increase in wind speed that precedes thunderstorms and downpours’, which the crew should have been able to manage.
According to the preliminary findings, the 184ft yacht therefore capsized and sank due to the improper actions of the crew, their underestimation of the weather and a number of safety devices not being activated properly.
The probe is exploring the possibility of alleged crimes including negligent shipwreck and multiple counts of manslaughter for the yacht’s captain and two of its crew members.
It has also raised the possibility of liability on the part of the superyacht’s builder.
The Bayesian disaster came just two days after the death of one of Lynch’s co-defendants in the fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain.
An inquest in June found the 52-year-old was hit and killed by a car after he took up running to deal with the stress of the US fraud trial they were facing.
Mr Chamberlain’s father, Grenville, revealed his son had taken up ultramarathons to help deal with the mental and physical pressure he was under from the imminent US court battle.
In a statement, he said: ‘In order to keep himself fit for the charges ahead, Steve took up running and committed himself to becoming an ultra long-distance runner.
‘He ran hundreds of miles, travelling to Snowdonia and the Lake District so he was able to negotiate areas he was not familiar [with], in order to run 200 miles in all weather conditions.’
HPE, one of HP’s successor companies, was approached for comment.
