Lynch as Britain’s Bill Gates Under Attack From HP

Autonomy Corp. founder Mike Lynch was planning to use his reputation as one of the most successful European entrepreneurs to help startups get off the ground. Now, he’s fighting allegations of accounting failures that threaten his status as the pin-up of British technology.

Hewlett-Packard Co., which last year agreed to buy Lynch’s company for $10.3 billion, yesterday took an $8.8 billion writedown and said some former members of Autonomy’s management team used accounting improprieties and disclosure failures to inflate the value before the deal.