He has been described at points as the Bill Gates of Britain, for founding the company which became one of the biggest enterprise software firms on the planet. He seemed to live up to the moniker when he negotiated an 11 billion US dollar (£8.64 billion) sale of Autonomy to Silicon Valley pioneer Hewlett Packard (HP), which generated a more than 800 million US dollar windfall for him.
But the sale also kicked off a 13-year legal saga. It was only in June this year that Mr Lynch was cleared of charges alleging he orchestrated a fraud and conspiracy leading up to the deal, which turned into a costly albatross for HP. He faced more than 20 years in US prison if convicted of the fraud and conspiracy allegations, and the Times reported that he spent 13 months under house arrest awaiting the trial that ended in June.
Being accused of a massive fraud represented a dramatic turn in fortunes for Mr Lynch. In a 2015 radio interview, Mike Lynch said he was born in Ilford in east London. He was brought up in Essex but has Irish heritage as the son of a nurse from Co Tipperary and a fireman from Co Cork and talked in the same interview of spending childhood summers in Carrick-On-Shannon and Tipperary where he has family.
He went to Cambridge University, and started his first business while he was studying for a PhD in signal processing and communications research. The company, Lynett Systems, produced audio products for the music industry, including electronic synthesisers and samplers. .