| Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of the British software company Autonomy has been the source of a yearslong legal dispute—and the death of Autonomy's former CEO, Mike Lynch, in a yacht sinking doesn't seem to have stopped its path in the courts. Bloomberg's Amy Thomson takes a look at what happens now. Plus: The extreme cost of cutting emissions to save the planet and Elon Musk's troubles in Brazil. Note: Today's newsletter is arriving later than usual because of technical difficulties. Click here to read this newsletter online. If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. When UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch in June beat criminal charges that he'd defrauded one of Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies, I asked his team for an interview. His people put me off until September. After months stuck away from home in California, he wanted to celebrate the court victory with a family trip. That vacation, of course, ended in tragedy when Lynch and six others died as his yacht sank in a storm off the coast of Italy. It was one of those rare moments that can shock a newsroom. We had to repurpose a planned magazine article about Lynch's fresh start into an obituary. He was 59. I covered Lynch off and on for more than a decade as his $11 billion sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard–the crux of the case against him–roughly coincided with my move to London from New York. The son of a nurse and a firefighter, he made his way to Cambridge via a scholarship to the private Bancroft's School when he was 11. He advised prime ministers, was part of a very small club of UK tech entrepreneurs to get megarich and in 2006 was knighted.  Mike Lynch in 2013. Photographer: Simon Dawson Lynch was one of those rare CEOs who'd call a reporter directly to explain a point or go out to lunch without any PR minders. As a boss, he was hard-driving and relentless, and, according to court testimony, he once threatened an employee by saying, "I swear if I could squeeze down a telephone line to California you would get to know directly how the f--- I feel about this." Even so, Lynch valued loyalty, and he inspired it in others. It was rare to hear of anyone leaving his inner circle, and even those who moved on tended to remain close to him personally. After he sold Autonomy to HP in 2011, he worked at the combined company for a short while. When he decamped, a number of former Autonomy employees came with him. He installed them at his new investment firm, Invoke Capital, or at startups founded under its umbrella. Invoke's first IPO—AI-based cybersecurity company Darktrace—made millions of pounds for former Autonomy employees. Those include Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy's former chief financial officer, who served jail time on charges similar to those that Lynch beat. While Darktrace thrived, Hewlett-Packard's fraud accusations haunted the final decade of Lynch's life, tainting his reputation and those of his ventures. It forced him to step back from the businesses, and short sellers seeking to cast doubt on Darktrace's accounting pointed to Autonomy. (Darktrace had consistently denied the short-seller accusations. While a 2023 auditor review it commissioned found some errors and inconsistencies, the company found no reason to adjust its financial reports.) Before Lynch overcame the criminal charges in the US, a separate UK civil trial found that he and Hussain had committed fraud. Lynch had planned to appeal the ruling, though his legal troubles will go on posthumously, with Hewlett Packard Enterprise confirming this week it will see the case, where it's seeking up to $4 billion in damages, to the end. All this is to say that there isn't a neat way to sum up the legacy of someone like Lynch. What's been all too clear in the past few weeks, from talking to the people who'd written about and worked with him, is that his story wasn't finished. We all wanted to know what would happen next. | 
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