City profiles

Mike Lynch

The founder of Autonomy, once dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”, is “a step closer” to extradition to the US after losing a multimillion-pound civil fraud claim brought by Hewlett-Packard, at London’s High Court, said The Times. The ruling follows “a tenyear legal battle over who was to blame” for the failure of HP’s disastrous $11bn acquisition of Autonomy in 2011. Lynch has always denied that he fraudulently inflated Autonomy’s value, blaming HP’s mismanagement. The judge disagreed. “Mike Lynch has gambled and lost,” said one barrister. “He fought the UK civil case in part to show the criminal case in the US was wrongly brought.” If convicted there, he faces up to 20 years in jail. Home Secretary Priti Patel has now approved his extradition. Lynch is appealing the decision.

Stacey Macken

Nearly two years ago, an employment tribunal ruled that BNP Paribas had subjected one of its Londonbased bankers, Stacey Macken, to “direct sex discrimination and victimisation”, said the FT. She has finally received a payout of £2m, one of the largest awards ever made by a judge in the UK – and “a rare win for women working in the City”. Macken, who joined BNP’s prime brokerage division in 2013, was regularly subjected to taunts. In one drunken incident, “a witch’s hat” was placed on her desk. But it was a widening pay gap that triggered her claim. Soon after joining, Macken discovered her pay was 25% lower than that of a male colleague in an equivalent role. Three years later, the gap had widened to 85%.