Hewlett Packard has dropped its attempt to remove the manager of Mike Lynch’s estate, agreeing that Jeremy Sandelson can continue in the role as the late entrepreneur’s family awaits a decision on whether it can appeal against a £920 million damages award.
Under the agreement reached between the parties, Sandelson will remain in place if permission to appeal is granted. The restructuring firm Interpath Advisory will take over if the application fails.
HP had sought earlier this year to oust Sandelson, a former partner at Lynch’s law firm, and replace him with Interpath, against the wishes of the family.
At a court hearing in April, HP’s lawyers argued that Sandelson had a “fundamental and irreconcilable” conflict of interest arising from his close ties to the family. The company said Interpath would be more impartial.
HP told the court that whoever managed 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 £920 million is almost twice the value of Lynch’s entire estate, so alternative sources would be required to make up the full sum.
Sandelson has managed the estate since Lynch’s death in August 2024.
Lynch, the founder of the software company Autonomy, was found liable in 2022 over its 2011 sale to HP for £8.3 billion. HP claimed he had defrauded the company by inflating Autonomy’s value. A High Court judge subsequently ruled that his estate should pay HP £920 million, a figure made up of damages plus interest and costs. HP had earlier lodged a final claim of almost $1.8 billion against the estate.
Lynch was found not guilty by a US jury in June 2024, two months before his death. He was on holiday celebrating that verdict with his family when the Bayesian sank off the Sicilian coast during a storm. He died alongside his teenage daughter, Hannah, and five others.
In May, Italian investigators said the Bayesian’s crew, rather than the storm, were to blame for the sinking. Prosecutors had appointed experts to examine whether a freak weather event, described by witnesses as a “tornado”, was responsible.
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 yacht 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 investigation is exploring alleged crimes including negligent shipwreck and multiple counts of manslaughter for the captain and two crew members, and has raised the possibility of liability on the part of the yacht’s builder.
The UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch is running a separate safety investigation into the foundering, which is being conducted in parallel to the Italian criminal inquiry. The builder, the Italian Sea Group, has separately filed a £400 million claim against Bacares, the yacht’s captain and two crew members.
The Bayesian sank two days after the death of Stephen Chamberlain, a co-defendant in Lynch’s fraud case. 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 the pair were facing.
Chamberlain’s father, Grenville, said his son had taken up ultramarathons to cope with the pressure. “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 said.
“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.
