The Curious Case of Mike Lynch: The Improbable Life & Death of a Tech Billionaire

Times of London business editor Prescott debuts with a riveting investigation into the late tech founder Mike Lynch, who was accused of defrauding Hewlett-Packard during the $11 billion sale in 2011 of his software company, Autonomy. Two sudden deaths, which occurred hours apart in August 2024, loom over the author’s query: Lynch himself, who drowned when his superyacht capsized, and former Autonomy VP Stephen Chamberlain, who was hit by a car. The author spends minimal time on conspiracy theorizing, however, instead tracking Lynch’s ambitious rise—a son of Irish immigrants, he was “hailed as ‘Britain’s Bill Gates’ ”—and heavily litigated fall. Prescott evocatively channels the exhilaration of Autonomy’s rapid ascent after its 1996 founding, as well as the pressures of the 2008 recession, when the company began to fudge its books, including by logging sales before their completion. Though whistleblowers raised red flags, Autonomy’s accounting irregularities only became a problem when Hewlett-Packard, reeling from buyer’s remorse, accused Lynch of fraud. Prescott’s detailed examination of the subsequent legal battles captivates, but the book shines as an in-depth character study of Lynch. The founder is at once brilliant and tyrannical, an eccentric who named boardrooms after Bond villains and “a king of spin” who could “lie... with fluidity” (he once pretended to have a finance director who simply “did not exist”). It’s an enthralling tale of tech industry hubris. (Jan.)