Finance

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell signaled on Friday that lower interest rates are ahead.
It would be the first time the central bank cut rates since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Investors likely shouldn’t do much to prepare for that shift, advisors said.
They can expect lower-risk assets like cash and short-term bonds to pay less of a return.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell on Friday gave the clearest indication yet that the central bank is likely to start cutting interest rates, which are currently at their highest level in two decades.
If a rate cut comes in September, as experts expect, it would be the first time officials have trimmed rates in over four years, when they slashed them to near zero at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Investors may be wondering what to do at the precipice of this policy shift.
Those who are already well diversified likely don’t need to do much right now, according to financial advisors on CNBC’s Advisor Council.
“For most people, this is welcome news, but it doesn’t mean we make big changes,” said Winnie Sun, co-founder and managing director of Sun Group Wealth Partners, based in Irvine, California.
“It’s kind of like getting a haircut: We’re doing small trims here and there,” she said.

Many long-term investors may not need to do anything at all — like those holding most or all of their assets in a target-date fund via their 401(k) plan, for example, advisors said.

Such funds are overseen by professional asset managers equipped to make the necessary tweaks for you.
“They’re doing it behind the scenes on your behalf,” said Lee Baker, a certified financial planner and founder of Claris Financial Advisors, based in Atlanta.
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That said, there are some adjustments that more-hands-on investors can consider.
Largely, those tweaks would apply to cash and fixed income holdings, and perhaps to the types of stocks in one’s portfolio, advisors said.

Lower rates are ‘positive’ for stocks

In his keynote address on Friday at the Fed’s annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell said that “the time has come” for interest-rate policy to adjust.
That proclamation comes as inflation has fallen significantly from its pandemic-era peak in mid-2022. And the labor market, though still relatively healthy, has hinted at signs of weakness. Lowering rates would take some pressure off the U.S. economy.

The Fed will likely be choosing between a 0.25 and 0.50 percentage-point cut at its next policy meeting in September, Stephen Brown, deputy chief North America economist at Capital Economics wrote in a note Friday.
Lower interest rates are “generally positive for stocks,” said Marguerita Cheng, a CFP and chief executive of Blue Ocean Global Wealth, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Businesses may feel more comfortable expanding if borrowing costs are lower, for example, she said.

But uncertainty around the number of future rate cuts, as well as their size and pace, mean investors shouldn’t make wholesale changes to their portfolios as a knee-jerk reaction to Powell’s proclamation, advisors said.
“Things can change,” Sun said.
Importantly, Powell didn’t commit to lowering rates, saying the trajectory depends on “incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”

Considerations for cash, bonds and stocks

Falling interest rates generally means investors can expect lower returns on their “safer” money, advisors said.
This would include holdings with relatively low risk, like cash held in savings accounts, money market funds or certificates of deposit, and money in shorter-term bonds.
High interest rates have meant investors enjoyed fairly lofty returns on these lower-risk holdings.

It’s kind of like getting a haircut: We’re doing small trims here and there.

Winnie Sun
co-founder and managing director of Sun Group Wealth Partners

However, such returns are expected to fall alongside declining interest rates, advisors said. They generally recommend locking in high guaranteed rates on cash now while they’re still available.
“It’s probably a good time for people who are thinking about buying CDs at the bank to lock in the higher rates for the next 12 months,” said Ted Jenkin, a CFP and the CEO and founder of oXYGen Financial, based in Atlanta.
“A year from now you probably won’t be able to renew at those same rates,” he said.
Others may wish to park excess cash — sums that investors don’t need for short-term spending — in higher-paying fixed-income investments like longer-duration bonds, said Carolyn McClanahan, a CFP and founder of Life Planning Partners in Jacksonville, Florida.

“We’re really being aggressive about making sure clients understand the interest-rate risk they’re taking by staying in cash,” she said. “Too many people aren’t thinking about it.”
“They’ll be crying in six months when interest rates are a lot lower,” she said.
Bond duration is a measure of a bond’s sensitivity to interest rate changes. Duration is expressed in years, and factors in the coupon, time to maturity and yield paid through the term.
Short-duration bonds — with a term of perhaps a few years or less — generally pay lower returns but carry less risk.
Investors may need to raise their duration (and risk) to keep yield in the same ballpark as it has been for the past two or so years, advisors said. Duration of five to 10 years is probably OK for many investors right now, Sun said.

Advisors generally don’t recommend tweaking stock-bond allocations, however.
But investors may wish to allocate more future contributions to different types of stocks, Sun said.
For example, stocks of utility and home-improvement companies tend to perform better when interest rates fall, she said.
Asset categories like real estate investment trusts, preferred stock and small-cap stocks also tend to do well in such an environment, Jenkin said. More

For economists and investors accustomed to staring at charts, the jagged peaks of the Teton mountains possess more than a passing resemblance to financial trend lines. They also form the backdrop to one of the year’s most keenly awaited central-bank speeches: annual reflections by the chair of the Federal Reserve at a conference hall in Jackson Hole, located in the valley below the Teton range. On August 23rd Jerome Powell did not disappoint. He made clear that having raised interest rates as sharply as any of the slopes in the distance, the central bank was now ready to begin the descent. More

Source: Finance – cnbc.com More

Fed Chair Jerome Powell laid the groundwork Friday for interest rate cuts ahead, though he declined to provide exact indications on timing or extent.
“The time has come for policy to adjust,” the central bank leader said in his much-awaited keynote address at the Fed’s annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
In addition to assessing the current state of play, Powell took considerable time in the speech to evaluate what led to the surge in inflation.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell laid the groundwork Friday for interest rate cuts ahead, though he declined to provide exact indications on timing or extent.
“The time has come for policy to adjust,” the central bank leader said in his much-awaited keynote address at the Fed’s annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”

Watch live: Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaks from Jackson Hole conference
With markets awaiting direction on where monetary policy is headed, Powell focused as much on a look back at what caused the inflation that led to an aggressive series of 11 rate hikes from March 2022 through July 2023.
However, he did note the progress on inflation and said the Fed can now turn its focus equally to the other side of its dual mandate, namely to make sure the economy stays around full employment.
“Inflation has declined significantly. The labor market is no longer overheated, and conditions are now less tight than those that prevailed before the pandemic,” Powell said. “Supply constraints have normalized. And the balance of the risks to our two mandates has changed.”
He vowed that “we will do everything we can” to make sure the labor market says strong and progress on inflation continues.

Stocks added to gains as Powell began to speak while Treasury yields dropped sharply . Traders maintained a 100% chance of at least a quarter percentage point rate cut in September and raised the odds of a potential half-point reduction to about 1-in-3, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch.
“This was a valedictory of essentially Chair Powell turning the page, saying the mission, which has been focused on inflation for the last two years, has been successful,” economist Paul McCulley, a former Pimco managing director, said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

Sees progress toward goals

The speech comes with the inflation rate consistently drifting back to the Fed’s 2% target though still not there yet. A gauge the Fed prefers to measure inflation most recently showed the rate at 2.5%, down from 3.2% a year ago and well off its peak above 7% in June 2022.
At the same time, the unemployment rate has slowly but consistently climbed higher, most recently at 4.3% and in an area that otherwise would trigger a time-tested indicator of a recession. However, Powell attributed the rise in unemployment to more individuals entering the workforce and a slower pace of hiring, rather than a rise in layoffs or a general deterioration in the labor market.
“Our objective has been to restore price stability while maintaining a strong labor market, avoiding the sharp increases in unemployment that characterized earlier disinflationary episodes when inflation expectations were less well anchored,” he said. “While the task is not complete, we have made a good deal of progress toward that outcome.”
Markets are expecting the Fed to start cutting in September, though Powell made no mention of when he thinks policy easing will begin. Minutes from the July open market committee meeting, released Wednesday, noted that a “vast majority” of officials believe a September cut will be appropriate so long as there are no data surprises.
“He’s pretty dovish. He bought the option to do whatever he needs to do next month, which is clearly an ease,” said Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities. “I don’t think the bar for 50 [basis points] is particularly high.”
In addition to assessing the current state of play, Powell took considerable time in the speech to evaluate what led to the surge in inflation — hitting its highest level in more than 40 years — as well as the Fed’s policy response and why price pressures have eased without a recession.

‘Good ship Transitory’

When inflation first began to rise in early 2021, he and his colleagues — as well as many Wall Street economists — dismissed it as “transitory” and caused by Covid-related factors that would abate.
“The good ship Transitory was a crowded one,” Powell quipped to laughter form attendees, “with most mainstream analysts and advanced-economy central bankers on board. I think I see some former shipmates out there today.”
When it became clear that inflation was spreading from goods to services, the Fed pivoted and began hiking, ultimately adding 5.25 percentage points to its benchmark overnight rate that had been around zero following emergency cuts in the early pandemic days.
The rise in inflation, Powell said, was “a global phenomenon,” the result of “rapid increases in the demand for goods, strained supply chains, tight labor markets, and sharp hikes in commodity prices.”
He attributed confidence in the Fed and well-anchored expectations that inflation ultimately would ease to the economy avoiding a sharp downturn during the hiking cycle.
“The FOMC did not flinch from carrying out our responsibilities, and our actions forcefully demonstrated our commitment to restoring price stability,” he said. “An important takeaway from recent experience is that anchored inflation expectations, reinforced by vigorous central bank actions, can facilitate disinflation without the need for slack.”
Powell added that there is still “much to be learned” from the experience.
“That is my assessment of events. Your mileage may differ,” he said.
Correction: The Fed hiked rates 11 times from March 2022 through July 2023. An earlier version misstated the number.

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Remote work surged during the Covid-19 pandemic and appears to have staying power.
It has endured largely because it has perceived benefits for both workers and employers, economists said.

Taiyou Nomachi | Digitalvision | Getty Images

Remote work, a trend that sprang to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic, appears to be an entrenched fixture of the U.S. labor market, according to economists.
The work-from-home revolution is “one of the major shifts in the U.S. labor market in the last couple decades,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at job site Indeed.

“It’s still kicking,” he said. “It’ll probably be around for a long time.”
The remote work label includes workers who do their jobs from home full time and so-called “hybrid” arrangements, whereby businesses might ask employees to work a few days of the workweek from the office and the rest from home.

Such arrangements were rare before the pandemic, economists said.
However, they became prolific amid stay-at-home orders during the early days of the pandemic.
While remote work opportunities have waned from their peak, they appear to have stabilized well above their pre-pandemic levels, economists said.

The number of days worked from home during the workweek has held steady since early 2023 at between 25% and 30%, more than triple the pre-Covid rate, according to WFH Research data as of July.  
The share of online job listings that advertise for remote or hybrid work also appears to have leveled off at just below 8%, about three times higher than in 2019, according to Indeed data as of June 30.
“Remote work is not going away,” Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who studies workplace management practices, recently told CNBC.

Why remote work has endured

Remote work has endured largely because it benefits both workers and employers, economists said.
For example, Bloom’s research suggests workers value hybrid work about as much as they would an 8% raise.
“It matters a lot, to a lot of job seekers,” making it difficult for employers to “wrench away” that aspect of work, Bunker said.
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Remote work is also a profitable arrangement for businesses, economists said.
For example, they might save money on real estate by downsizing their office space. Remote work also opens up the pool of potential candidates during hiring, Bunker said.
Workers who can work remotely also tend to quit less frequently because they value the arrangement, thereby reducing company outlays on hiring, recruitment and training, Bloom said.
Of course, not all jobs can be done from home. About 36% of employees with jobs that could be done remotely were instead working in the office full time as of July, according to WFH Research.

Companies have pointed to downsides of remote work, including a reduced ability to observe and monitor employees and reduced peer mentoring, cited by 45% and 42% of employers, respectively, according to a 2023 ZipRecruiter survey.
An economic downturn could potentially trigger employers to pull back on remote work, to the extent workers lose leverage, Bunker said.
However, he questions whether many would do so, given the aforementioned financial benefits of remote work. Additionally, such a move would likely reduce morale and worker productivity during a period of already-low morale, he added.  

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Customers take out food from a Cava restaurant in Chicago, Illinois, on May 28, 2024.
Scott Olson | Getty Images

Check out the companies making headlines after the bell: 
Cava Group — The fast-casual restaurant brand saw shares climb nearly 6% in after-hours trading following a better-than-expected earnings report. Cava posted a profit of 17 cents per share, or 4 cents above the LSEG estimate. Its revenue also came in above expectations.

Uber — Shares of the ride-sharing platform fell about 3% after the company and General Motors’ Cruise announced a multiyear partnership. The embattled autonomous vehicle company plans to offer driverless rides to Uber users as soon as next year. GM shares rose more than 1% after hours.
Ross Stores — The off-price retailer’s stock surged about 6% in extended trading following an earnings beat. Ross reported earnings per share of $1.59 in the second quarter, 9 cents above analysts’ expectation, according to LSEG. Revenue of $5.25 billion matched the estimate.
Workday — Shares of the cloud company jumped more than 11% after the firm’s earnings and revenue exceeded expectations. The firm said its subscription revenue for the third quarter will be $1.96 billion, compared to $1.97 billion expected by analysts polled by StreetAccount.
Bill Holdings — The cloud-based payments company saw shares rising more than 3% after a stronger-than-expected quarterly report. Bill posted adjusted earnings of 57 cents per share in the fiscal fourth quarter, or 11 cents above an LSEG estimate. Revenue of $344 million was also higher than an expectation of $328 million.
Intuit — The financial technology platform’s shares climbed about 3% in extended trading, boosted by strong earnings. Intuit posted earnings of $1.99 per share, excluding items, on revenue of $3.18 billion. Analysts polled by LSEG expected earnings per share of $1.84 and revenue of $3.08 billion. More

Fed Chair Jerome Powell will deliver his policy speech at 10 a.m. ET from the central bank’s annual conclave in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
For all the attention being paid to the presentation, the chances of it containing any startling news seem remote.
In previous years, Powell has used Jackson Hole speech to outline broad policy initiatives and to provide clues about the future of policy.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell holds a press conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy in Washington, U.S., July 31, 2024. 
Kevin Mohatt | Reuters

For all the attention being paid to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s policy speech Friday, the chances of it containing any startling news seem remote.
After all, the market has its mind made up: The Fed is going to start cutting rates in September — and likely will keep cutting through the end of the year and into 2025.

While there are still some questions about the magnitude and frequency of the reductions, Powell is now left to deliver a brief review of where things have been, and give some limited guidance about what’s ahead.
“Stop me if you’ve heard this before: They’re still data dependent,” said Lou Crandall, a former Fed official and now chief economist at Wrightson-ICAP, a dealer-broker where he has worked for more than 40 years. He expects Powell to be “directionally unambiguous, but specifics about how fast and exactly when will depend on the data between now and the meeting. Little doubt that they will start cutting in September.”
The speech will be delivered at 10 a.m. ET from the Fed’s annual conclave of global central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The conference is titled “Reassessing the Effectiveness and Transmission of Monetary Policy” and runs through Saturday.
If there were any doubts about the Fed’s intentions to enact at least a quarter percentage point cut at the Sept. 17-18 open market committee meeting, they were put to rest Wednesday. Minutes from the July session showed a “vast majority” of members in favor of a September cut, barring any surprises.
Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker drove the point home even further Thursday when he told CNBC that in “September we need to start a process of moving rates down.”

A question of guidance

A main question is whether the first reduction in more than four years is a quarter point or half point, a topic on which Harker would not commit. Markets are betting on a quarter but leaving open about a 1-in-4 chance for a half, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch.
A half-point move likely would require a substantial deterioration in economic data between now and then, and specifically another weak nonfarm payrolls report in two weeks.
“Even though I think the Fed’s base case is they’ll move a quarter, and my base case is they’ll move a quarter, I don’t think they’ll feel the need to provide any guidance around that this far out,” Crandall said.
In previous years, Powell has used Jackson Hole speech to outline broad policy initiatives and to provide clues about the future of policy.
At his first appearance, in 2018, he outlined his views on the interest and unemployment rates considered “neutral” or stable. A year later, he indicated rate cuts were coming. In a speech delivered amid racial protests in 2020, Powell unveiled a new approach that would allow inflation to run hotter than usual, without rate hikes, in the interest of promoting a more inclusive jobs market. That “flexible average inflation targeting,” though, would precede a period of surging prices — leaving Powell in the ensuing three years to navigate a delicate minefield of policy.
This time around, the task will be to confirm the market’s expectations while also indicating his impressions of the economy and in particular the moderating of inflation pressures and some concerns over the labor market.
“To us, the key will be Chair Powell’s tone, which we expect to lean dovish” or towards lower rates, Jack Janasiewicz, lead portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions, said in written commentary. “Simply put, inflation continues to trend towards the 2% target seemingly at a rate exceeding consensus. Combine this with signs that the labor market is softening and one gets the sense that there is little need to retain a hawkish stance.”

Listening to markets

The Fed has held its key overnight borrowing rate in place for the past 13 months following a series of aggressive hikes. Markets have mostly done well under the higher-rate regime but rebelled briefly after the July meeting following signs of a deteriorating labor picture and a weakening manufacturing sector.
Powell is expected to give at least a nod to some economic headwinds, as well as the progress the Fed has made in its inflation fight.
“We expect Powell to express a bit more confidence in the inflation outlook and to put a bit more emphasis on downside risks in the labor market than in his press conference after the July FOMC meeting, in light of the data released since then,” Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle said in a recent note.
Goldman is about at the consensus of market expectations: rate cuts at each of the next three meetings, followed by more easing in 2024 that eventually will shave about 2 percentage points off the fed funds rate — a policy path that will be teed up, in very general terms, by Powell in Jackson Hole.
Fed chairs profess to not be sensitive to financial market movements, but Powell no doubt saw the reaction after the July meeting and will want to assuage fears that the central bank will keep waiting before it begins to ease.
“Powell is inclined to support the stock market,” said Komal Sr-Kumar, head of Sri-Kumar Global Strategies. “Time and again, he has indicated rates are going to come down. They haven’t come down, but this time around, he’s going to do it.” More

Mike Lynch, who had just recently won a landmark U.S. fraud trial, was found dead in the wreckage of a yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily. He was 59.
Lynch, who was once lauded by the U.K. press as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” was the founder of Autonomy, a software company he sold to Hewlett Packard for $11.7 billion in 2011.
HP and U.S. prosecutors accused Lynch of using financial engineering techniques to artificially inflate the value of his company.

Mike Lynch, 59, is the founder of enterprise software firm Autonomy. He was acquitted of fraud charges in June after defending himself in a trial over allegations that he artificially inflated Autonomy’s value in an $11.7 billion sale to tech giant Hewlett Packard.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON — British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch has been found dead in the wreckage of his superyacht, which sank off the coast of Sicily earlier this week. He was 59 years old.
Just two months ago, Lynch won a stunning victory in a landmark U.S. trial over allegations from Hewlett Packard that he had artificially inflated the value of his company Autonomy when he sold it to the U.S. enterprise tech giant for $11.7 billion in 2011.

Fears for Lynch’s life swirled earlier this week when he was reported missing after the sinking of a yacht — later confirmed as owned by his wife, Angela Bacares — off the coast of Porticello, a small fishing village in the province of Palermo in Italy.
Bacares was one of 15 people rescued rescued following the yacht’s collapse earlier this week.
The anchored vessel, a 56-meter (184 feet) sailing yacht named the Bayesian, was hit by a violent storm early Monday morning.
Witnesses told local media the boat, which was carrying 10 crew members and 12 passengers, descended rapidly after its mast broke.
Lynch’s body was retrieved from the wreckage of the yacht Wednesday, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC on Thursday. His daughter, Hannah, remains unaccounted for, according to the source, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the situation. Sky News earlier reported the news.

‘Britain’s Bill Gates’

Born in Ilford, a large town in East London, to Irish parents in 1965, Lynch grew up near Chelmsford in the English county of Essex. His mother was a nurse and his father was a fireman.
Lynch had a modest upbringing but, at the age of 11, he was awarded a scholarship to attend Bancroft’s School, a private school in Woodford Green, East London.

Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy, speaks at a Confederation of British Industry conference in London, U.K., in 2003.
Graham Barclay | Bloomberg | Getty Images

From Bancroft’s, he attended the University of Cambridge, where he studied natural sciences, focusing on areas including electronics, mathematics and biology.
After completing his undergraduate studies, Lynch completed a Ph.D. in signals processing and communications.
Toward the end of the 1980s, Lynch founded Lynett Systems Ltd., a firm which produced designs and audio products for the music industry.
A few years later, in the early 1990s, he founded a fingerprint recognition business called Cambridge Neurodynamics, which counted the South Yorkshire Police among its customers.
But his big break came in 1996 with Autonomy, which he co-founded with David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt as a spinoff from Cambridge Neurodynamics. The company scaled into one of Britain’s biggest tech firms.
Autonomy’s software, made up of pattern-matching algorithms, was touted as a solution that could help employees abstract meaning from unstructured data, including web pages, email, video, audio and text.
These pattern recognition techniques were based on so-called Bayesian inference, a method of statistical inference named after a theorem developed by 18th century statistician Thomas Bayes.
Lynch’s luxury yacht, the Bayesian, was named after this mathematical model.

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch poses at the company’s then-offices near Cambridge, U.K, on Thursday, July 19, 2007.
Graham Barclay | Bloomberg | Getty Images

After the sale of his company to HP, Lynch became known by U.K. national media as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” serving as a rare example of a U.K. businessman who successfully built and scaled a globally significant tech business selling into various markets around the world.

Legal battle with HP

However, Lynch’s reputation would go on to take a hit after the deal with HP took a turn for the worse. In 2012, HP took an $8.8 billion write-down on the value of Autonomy — just a year after buying it.
Lynch soon became the target of a protracted legal battle with the U.S. tech giant, with HP suing Lynch for $5 billion in damages over accusations that Lynch had inflated Autonomy’s sales by about $700 million.
Lynch, who had long denied the allegations, was extradited from Britain to the U.S. in 2023 to stand trial over the HP allegations.
This came despite pressure on the U.K. government from Lynch’s supporters not to allow his extradition.
U.S. prosecutors had filed criminal charges including wire fraud and conspiracy for an alleged scheme to inflate Autonomy’s revenue starting in 2009, partly to entice a buyer.
However, in a stunning victory in June, Lynch was acquitted of fraud charges following trial. The trial lasted three months.

Mike Lynch leaves the Rolls Building in London following the civil case over his £8.4 billion sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. Picture date: Monday March 25, 2019.
Dominic Lipinski | PA Images | Getty Images

During the course of the trial, Lynch took the stand in his own defense. He denied wrongdoing and told jurors that HP botched Autonomy’s integration.
Prosecutors had alleged Lynch, along with Autonomy’s now-deceased finance executive Stephen Chamberlain, who also died in a tragic car crash Saturday, padded Autonomy’s finances in a number of ways.
These included back-dated agreements, concealing the firm’s loss-making business by reselling hardware, and intimidating or paying off individuals who had raised concerns.
However, Lynch told jurors he had focused on tech-related matters at Autonomy, not finances.
Accounting and money decisions were left to Autonomy’s then-chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, he said.
Hussain was separately convicted in the U.S. in 2018 on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud related to the HP deal. He was released from prison in January after serving a five-year sentence.

Lynch’s influence on UK tech

Alongside founding Autonomy, Lynch also runs Invoke Capital, a venture capital firm focused on backing European tech startups. He founded Invoke in 2012.
He became a key voice supporting the U.K. technology industry, backing key names like cybersecurity firm Darktrace and legal tech firm Luminance.

Publicly listed Darktrace, which had fended off similar allegations of inflating its revenue by U.S. short seller Quintessential Capital Management, earlier this year agreed to a deal to be bought out and taken private by U.S. private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $5.32 billion in cash.
Lynch was previously on the board of U.K. broadcaster BBC, and once also served as an advisor to the U.K. government on the Council for Science and Technology.
In 2014 and 2015, he made the Forbes’ billionaires list, with an estimate net worth of $1 billion. However, while facing legal costs amid his dispute with HP, he dropped off that list in 2016.
Legal struggles aside, Lynch had several hobbies to keep him busy, including keeping and caring for cattle and pigs at his home in Suffolk.

Mike Lynch, founder of software firm Autonomy, at the company’s headquarters in, Cambridge, U.K., Aug. 24,  2000.
Bryn Colton | Hulton Archive | Getty Images

“I keep rare breeds,” Lynch told LeadersIn in a 2016 interview. “I have cows that became defunct in the 1940s and pigs that no one has kept since the medieval times and none of them have any Apple products whatsoever.”
Prior to his death, Lynch had reportedly returned to his farm in Suffolk, a county in the east of England, to recover from his U.S. legal battle, the local East Anglian Times newspaper reported.
Just weeks before he was reported missing, Lynch told The Times newspaper of how he feared dying in prison if found guilty over the HP allegations.
“‘If this had gone the wrong way, it would have been the end of my life as I have known it in any sense,” Lynch said in the interview with The Times.
“It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life – the question is, what do you want to do with it?” he added. More