The money is tied to a lawsuit in Britain by the tech services giant over its acquisition of Autonomy, the software firm Mr. Lynch founded. He died last month.

Sept. 3, 2024

Hewlett Packard Enterprise will continue to pursue civil fraud damages of up to $4 billion from the estate of Mike Lynch, the British software mogul who died last month when his yacht sank.

The damages, which are tied to a nine-year-old lawsuit filed in Britain, represent the last legal fight that Mr. Lynch faced related to the $11 billion sale of his software company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. He was acquitted in June of criminal charges in the United States over the deal.

Soon after buying Autonomy, Hewlett-Packard accused Autonomy senior executives of lying about the state of the business. It also wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8 billion. A period of turmoil followed, with executive turnover and, eventually, a breakup of the company, into the services-focused Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the hardware specialist HP Inc.

In 2015, the company sued Mr. Lynch and Autonomy’s former chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, in London, seeking 5 billion pounds ($6.5 billion) in damages. Both men denied the allegations, and the two sides fought in court for years, in what the presiding judge, Robert Hildyard, called “amongst the longest and most complex in English legal history.”