Connect with us

Published

on

Mike Lynch, 59, is the founder of enterprise software firm Autonomy. He was acquitted of fraud charges in June after defending himself in a trial over allegations that he artificially inflated Autonomy’s value in an $11.7 billion sale to tech giant Hewlett Packard.

Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON — British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch has been found dead in the wreckage of his superyacht, which sank off the coast of Sicily earlier this week. He was 59 years old.

Just two months ago, Lynch won a stunning victory in a landmark U.S. trial over allegations from Hewlett Packard that he had artificially inflated the value of his company Autonomy when he sold it to the U.S. enterprise tech giant for $11.7 billion in 2011.

Fears for Lynch’s life swirled earlier this week when he was reported missing after the sinking of a yacht — later confirmed as owned by his wife Angela Bacares — off the coast of Porticello, a small fishing village in the province of Palermo in Italy.

Bacares was one of 15 people rescued rescued following the yacht’s collapse earlier this week.

The anchored vessel, a 56-meter (184 feet) sailing yacht named the Bayesian, was hit by a violent storm early Monday morning.

Witnesses told local media the anchored boat, which was carrying 10 crew members and 12 passengers, descended rapidly after its mast broke.

Lynch’s body was retrieved from the wreckage of the yacht Wednesday, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC Thursday. His daughter, Hannah, remains unaccounted for, according to the source, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the situation. Sky News earlier reported the news.

‘Britain’s Bill Gates’

Born in Ilford, a large town in East London, to Irish parents in 1965, Lynch grew up near Chelmsford in the English county of Essex. His mother was a nurse and his father was a fireman.

Lynch had a modest upbringing but, at the age of 11, he was awarded a scholarship to attend Bancroft’s School, a private school in Woodford Green, East London.

Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy, speaks at a Confederation of British Industry conference in London, U.K., in 2003.

Graham Barclay | Bloomberg | Getty Images

From Bancroft’s, he attended the University of Cambridge, where he studied natural sciences, focusing on areas including electronics, mathematics and biology.

After completing his undergraduate studies, Lynch completed a Ph.D. in signals processing and communications.

Toward the end of the 1980s, Lynch founded Lynett Systems Ltd., a firm which produced designs and audio products for the music industry.

A few years later, in the early 1990s, he founded a fingerprint recognition business called Cambridge Neurodynamics, which counted the South Yorkshire Police among its customers.

But his big break came in 1996 with Autonomy, which he co-founded with David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt as a spinoff from Cambridge Neurodynamics. The company scaled into one of Britain’s biggest tech firms.

Autonomy’s software, made up of pattern-matching algorithms, was touted as a solution that could help employees abstract meaning from unstructured data, including web pages, email, video, audio, and text.

These pattern recognition techniques were based on so-called Bayesian inference, a method of statistical inference named after a theorem developed by 18th century statistician Thomas Bayes.

Lynch’s luxury yacht, the Bayesian, was named after this mathematical model.

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch poses at the company’s then-offices near Cambridge, U.K, on Thursday, July 19, 2007.

Graham Barclay | Bloomberg | Getty Images

After the sale of his company to HP, Lynch became known by U.K. national media as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” serving as a rare example of a U.K. businessman who successfully built and scaled a globally significant tech business selling into various markets around the world.

Legal battle with HP

However, Lynch’s reputation would go on to take a hit after the deal with HP took a turn for the worse. In 2012, HP took an $8.8 billion write-down on the value of Autonomy — just a year after buying it.

Lynch soon became the target of a protracted legal battle with the U.S. tech giant, with HP suing Lynch for $5 billion in damages over accusations that Lynch had inflated Autonomy’s sales by about $700 million.

Lynch, who had long denied the allegations, was extradited from Britain to the U.S. in 2023 to stand trial over the HP allegations.

This came despite pressure on the U.K. government from Lynch’s supporters not to allow his extradition.

U.S. prosecutors had filed criminal charges including wire fraud and conspiracy for an alleged scheme to inflate Autonomy’s revenue starting in 2009, partly to entice a buyer.

However, in a stunning victory in June, Lynch was acquitted of fraud charges following trial. The trial lasted three months.

Mike Lynch leaves the Rolls Building in London following the civil case over his £8.4 billion sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. Picture date: Monday March 25, 2019.

Dominic Lipinski | PA Images | Getty Images

During the course of the trial, Lynch took the stand in his own defense. He denied wrongdoing and told jurors that HP botched Autonomy’s integration.

Prosecutors had alleged Lynch, along with Autonomy’s now-deceased finance executive Stephen Chamberlain, who also died in a tragic car crash Saturday, padded Autonomy’s finances in a number of ways.

These included back-dated agreements, concealing the firm’s loss-making business by reselling hardware, and intimidating or paying off individuals who had raised concerns.

However, Lynch told jurors he had focused on tech-related matters at Autonomy, not finances.

Accounting and money decisions were left to Autonomy’s then-chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, he said.

Hussain was separately convicted in the U.S. in 2018 on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud related to the HP deal. He was released from prison in January after serving a five-year sentence.

Lynch’s influence on UK tech

Publicly listed Darktrace, which had fended off similar allegations of inflating its revenue by U.S. short seller Quintessential Capital Management, earlier this year agreed to a deal to be bought out and taken private by U.S. private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $5.32 billion in cash.

Lynch was previously on the board of U.K. broadcaster BBC, and once also served as an advisor to the U.K. government on the Council for Science and Technology.

In 2014 and 2015, he made the Forbes’ billionaires list, with an estimate net worth of $1 billion. However, while facing legal costs amid his dispute with HP, he dropped off that list in 2016.

Legal struggles aside, Lynch had several hobbies to keep him busy, including keeping and caring for cattle and pigs at his home in Suffolk.

Mike Lynch, founder of software firm Autonomy, at the company’s headquarters in, Cambridge, U.K., Aug. 24,  2000.

Bryn Colton | Hulton Archive | Getty Images

“I keep rare breeds,” Lynch told LeadersIn in a 2016 interview. “I have cows that became defunct in the 1940s and pigs that no one has kept since the medieval times and none of them have any Apple products whatsoever.”

Prior to his passing, Lynch had reportedly returned to his farm in Suffolk, a county in the east of England, to recover from his U.S. legal battle, the local East Anglian Times newspaper reported.

Just weeks before he was reported missing, Lynch told The Times newspaper of how he feared dying in prison if found guilty over the HP allegations.

“‘If this had gone the wrong way, it would have been the end of my life as I have known it in any sense,” Lynch said in the interview with The Times.

“It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life – the question is, what do you want to do with it?” he added.

Continue Reading

Technology

Wall Street is anxious to hear Apple CEO Tim Cook’s first public comments on tariffs

Published

on

By

Wall Street is anxious to hear Apple CEO Tim Cook's first public comments on tariffs

Apple CEO Tim Cook poses as Apple holds an event at the Steve Jobs Theater on its campus in Cupertino, California, on Sept. 9, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

The most anticipated part of Apple’s Thursday earnings won’t be iPhone sales or Mac forecasts – it’ll be CEO Tim Cook’s comments on how the company is dealing with President Donald Trump’s tariffs. 

Apple is one of the most exposed companies to Trump’s tariffs and expected retaliation. It makes about three-quarters of its overall revenue from physical goods — iPhones, Macs and Apple Watches — mostly made in China or elsewhere in Asia. And the U.S. is its largest market.

“It’s how Apple responds to ‘everything else’ that will set the tone for post-earnings sentiment,” wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring in a Monday note.

He has an overweight rating on the stock, and wants to hear what Cook and Apple finance chief Kevan Parekh have to say about how the company is mitigating supply chain and tariffs risks, if Apple will raise prices or eat costs, and the status of Cook’s relationships with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Apple hasn’t commented on the hefty tariffs Trump announced for every country in the world on April 2, but they represent a deep threat to the iPhone maker’s supply chain and sent the company’s share price down 9%. 

“We are monitoring the situation and don’t have anything more to add than that,” Cook said during Apple’s January earnings call. Those were the company’s most recent comments on Trump’s trade policy.

Apple is perhaps the highest-profile example of a company that’s gotten caught up in Trump’s trade war. 

It’s the most valuable U.S. company, hundreds of millions of Americans own iPhones and Cook built his reputation in Silicon Valley as an operations expert who keeps Apple’s inventory low and its logistics tight.

But Apple and Cook have stayed tight-lipped publicly even as Trump administration officials called for the company to move iPhone production to the U.S., imagining millions of Americans “screwing in little screws” to build the devices.

The White House suggested that Apple was capable of building iPhones in the U.S., something that many analysts said is impossible at worst and would result in a $3,500 iPhone at best

“I speak to Tim Cook. I helped Tim Cook, recently, and that whole business,” Trump said in an oval office briefing earlier this month after he delayed the highest-tariffs on non-China nations for 90 days. It was a move that boosted Apple stock. Cook has maintained a line of communication with the Trump administration, according to Trump, dating back to his first term.

Apple CEO Tim Cook escorts President Donald Trump as he tours Apple’s Mac Pro manufacturing plant with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin looking on in Austin, Texas, November 20, 2019.

Tom Brenner | Reuters

Now it’s time to hear from Apple itself. 

The tariffs are a material issue that will eventually affect the company’s financials. TD Cowen predicts that the current tariffs will cost Apple about 6% of its annual earnings this year. Apple reported about $94 billion in profit in its fiscal 2024.

It’s not just investors that want a peek into Apple’s thinking — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., questioned Cook about what he discussed with the Trump administration ahead of the president’s decision to pause tariffs on non-China nations.

Apple’s share price remains lower than it was on April 2, even though analysts have said the pause will give Apple some flexibility to avoid the highest tariffs, thanks to its production locations in India and Vietnam.

Several recent reports have said that Apple will try to source as many iPhones as possible from from India, which only faces a 10% tariff, to avoid the highest 145% tariffs on China. But although Apple has been ramping up iPhone production in India since 2017, the company has only recently begun to ship commercially significant quantities in recent years, and Apple hasn’t confirmed the pivot to India or discussed its Indian production capabilities.

“While it’s possible for all 25 million of India capacity to be allocated to the US near-term, we think it could take approximately a year for production to double to 50 million overall,” TD Cowen analyst Krish Sankar wrote Monday, saying that Apple is expected to sell between 65 million and 70 million iPhones in the U.S. this year.

Apple declined to comment on sourcing iPhones to the U.S. from India.

Another closely-watched metric will be Apple’s China revenue, which could indicate if rising nationalism will hurt iPhone sales in the company’s third largest market, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Some analysts have noted that the smartphone owners in China are more likely to switch phone brands than Western consumers. There’s concern that now those Chinese consumers could take cues from media and government officials and buy Chinese phone brands, such as phones made by Huawei.

Dipanjan Chatterjee, principal analyst at Forrester, said that if Apple were to move a lot of production out of China, it would also have to consider if that could upset the Chinese consumer.

“If Apple is going to pull production out of China, that’s not going to go down well in that market,” Chatterjee said. “They’re going to hedge. You’re going to see a lot more saying and a little bit of tinkering and not a whole lot of doing.”

Analysts polled by FactSet expect Apple to report $1.62 in earnings per share on $94.19 billion in sales, which would be an almost 4% revenue increase on an annual basis.

WATCH: Street’s biggest Apple bear says a production move to India is unrealistic

Street's biggest Apple bear says a production move to India is unrealistic

Continue Reading

Technology

GE HealthCare beats on earnings, slashes full year outlook due to tariffs

Published

on

By

GE HealthCare beats on earnings, slashes full year outlook due to tariffs

Cheng Xin | Getty Images

GE HealthCare reported better-than-expected first-quarter results on Wednesday, but the company slashed its annual forecast to account for the impact of President Donald Trump’s far-reaching reciprocal tariff policy.

Shares of GE HealthCare were up 3% Wednesday.

Here’s how the company did:

  • Earnings per share: $1.01 adjusted vs. 91 cents expected by LSEG.
  • Revenue: $4.78 billion vs. $4.66 billion expected by LSEG.

Revenue increased 3% year over year from $4.65 billion. GE HealthCare reported net income of $564 million, or $1.23 per share, up from $374 million, or 81 cents per share, during the same period last year.

For its full year, GE HealthCare said it expects to report adjusted earnings in the range of $3.90 to $4.10 per share, which is a decline of 13% to 9% from its guide last quarter. The company said the range includes roughly 85 cents per share of tariff impact.

“Regarding the current global trade environment, we are actively driving mitigation actions,” GE HealthCare  CEO Peter Arduini said in a statement. “We continue to see strong customer demand in many of the markets we serve and are well-positioned to drive long-term value as we invest in future innovation.”

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

hide content

GE HealthCare’s stock over a one month period.

GE HealthCare sells a range of medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics, imaging solutions, AI tools and data analytics solutions. The company manufactures its products in 20 countries and serves customers in more than 160 countries around the globe, according to its website.

On April 2, Trump introduced his tariff policy, which initially established a 10% baseline tariff on almost every country, though many nations such as China, Vietnam and Taiwan were subject to much steeper rates. Days later, Trump dropped those steeper rates to 10% for 90 days to allow trade negotiations with those countries.

China remains a notable exception, as Trump has imposed cumulative tariffs of 145% on Chinese goods this year. This brings the total tariffs on some products from China to as high as 245%, according to a fact sheet released by the White House.

GE HealthCare has a substantial presence in China, and Arduini told investors Wednesday that the company has “conservatively assumed” that the bilateral US and China tariffs will account for 75% of its total net tariff impact.

The company announced in February that Johnson & Johnson veteran Will Song will lead its China business as CEO starting in July.

WATCH: GE Healthcare CEO Peter Arduini goes one-on-one with Jim Cramer

GE Healthcare CEO Peter Arduini talks AI investments

Continue Reading

Technology

Snap sinks 15% after withholding guidance, citing ad concerns

Published

on

By

Snap sinks 15% after withholding guidance, citing ad concerns

Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc., speaks onstage during the Snap Partner Summit 2023 at Barker Hangar on April 19, 2023 in Santa Monica, California. 

Joe Scarnici | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Snap shares fell more than 15% Wednesday after the social media company withheld second-quarter guidance due to the uncertain macroeconomic environment.

“While our topline revenue has continued to grow, we have experienced headwinds to start the current quarter, and we believe it is prudent to continue to balance our level of investment with realized revenue growth,” the company said Tuesday, adding that macro conditions could impact advertising demand.

Snap’s finance chief Derek Andersen said during an earnings call that some advertisers are already seeing an impact from changes to the de minimis exemption. The loophole, which ends Friday, currently allows shipments under $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free.

President Donald Trump‘s shifting tariff plans have created an unsettling backdrop for companies this earnings season. Fears of a weakening economy have also fueled concerns that companies could ease up advertising spending, where Snap makes a key component of revenues.

The company said ad revenues grew 9% year over year to $1.21 billion during the quarter.

Read more CNBC tech news

Despite holding back on guidance, Snap reported 14% revenue growth, up from $1.19 billion a year ago to $1.36 billion. Snap’s loss also narrowed 54% to $140 million, or 8 cents per share, from about $305 million, or 19 cents, last year. The loss was due to a $70.1 million charge related to cash severance, stock-based compensation expenses and other costs associated with a 2024 restructuring.

Snap also signaled ongoing user growth. Daily active users grew to 460 million, up from 453 million the previous quarter. The company said it hit 900 million monthly active users, up from 850 million in August, the last time Snap provided that stat. DAUs fell to 99 million from 100 million in North America during the period, but Snap says it doesn’t expect more declines this quarter.

Many on Wall Street expect the company’s lack of visibility into the second quarter and macro backdrop to weigh on shares and adjusted price targets to account for it.

“While [price-to-sales ratio] is nearing a historical bottom and could support stock, we reiterate our neutral rating as Snap has been pressured more than peers in prior macro downturns,” said Bank of America’s Justin Post.

Other social media companies saw shares move lower Tuesday, including Pinterest, down 5%, Reddit, down 6%, and Meta, down 3%.

WATCH: Ad spending shifts amid tariffs: Here’s what to know

Ad spending shifts amid tariffs: Here's what to know

Continue Reading

Trending