British tech magnate Mike Lynch has been cleared of charges alleging he orchestrated a fraud and conspiracy leading up to an $11 billion deal that turned into a costly albatross for Silicon Valley pioneer Hewlett Packard. The not-guilty verdicts reached Thursday by a federal court jury in San Francisco followed an 11-week criminal trial that delved into the history of HP’s 2011 acquisition of Autonomy, a business software that Lynch founded and then oversaw as CEO. HP at first celebrated the purchase as a huge coup that would propel the company down a promising new path, but then quickly came to regret under its then-CEO Meg Whitman.
