Former Autonomy Vice President Dies in Road Accident Ahead of Ex-Boss Mike Lynch’s Disappearance
Stephen Chamberlain, the former vice president of finance at Autonomy, has died in a road accident just days before his former boss and co-defendant Mike Lynch went missing.
According to Chamberlain’s lawyer, Gary Lincenberg, the incident occurred on Saturday morning while Chamberlain was out for a run in Cambridgeshire. He was fatally struck by a car and taken to the hospital with serious injuries. Chamberlain, who had faced charges of fraud and conspiracy alongside Lynch, was acquitted of all charges in a trial in San Francisco earlier this year.
The news of Chamberlain’s death comes as authorities continue to search for Lynch and five others after a luxury yacht, the Bayesian, sank off the coast of Sicily early Monday morning. The yacht, which was owned by Lynch, was hit by an unexpected storm.
According to local media reports, Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah is among the six people still missing, while his wife Angela Bacares was one of the 15 people rescued after the yacht capsized.
In a statement, Lincenberg described Chamberlain as a “dear client and friend” and confirmed that he was out running in Stretham when he was fatally struck by a car. Cambridgeshire police had appealed for witnesses and information after a man in his 50s was taken to the hospital with serious injuries over the weekend.
Chamberlain had left Autonomy in 2012 to become the chief operating officer at cybersecurity firm Darktrace. He also volunteered as a finance director for Cambridge United, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The sale of Autonomy, which was then Britain’s largest software firm, to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011 was the biggest tech takeover of a FTSE 100 firm at the time. However, just a year later, HP wrote down £5.5 billion of the company’s value, claiming that its revenue streams had been inflated.
The search for Lynch and the other missing individuals on the Bayesian continues, with updates being shared by authorities.
