Mike Lynch, a tech entrepreneur, who is also called British Bill Gates, has reportedly been missing after his Bayesian superyacht, sank off the coast in Sicily during a violent storm on Monday.
Lynch, the founder of Autonomy Corporation, his 18-year-old daughter, and four others are still missing. However, his wife Angela Bacares and 14 other people survived, Italy’s civil protection and authorities said.
The superyacht was carrying 22 people onboard, including a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers.
The body of the yacht was discovered at a depth of 50 metres off Porticello, near Palermo. Rescue teams have recovered one body, which is thought to be the yacht’s cook, reports Business Standard.
According to BBC, the 183-foot luxury yacht is owned by Revtom, a firm controlled by Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares, which is based on the Isle of Man.
Six people are still missing
The missing are believed to be inside the yacht, according to officials.
Salvatore Cocina, head of the Civil Protection in Sicily said Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International (MS.N), and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance were also among the missing people, report Reuters.
The trip had been organised by Lynch for his work colleagues.
“The wind was very strong. Bad weather was expected, but not of this magnitude,” a coast guard official in the Sicilian capital Palermo told Reuters.
“We managed to keep the ship in position and after the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone,” Karsten Borner told journalists. The other boat “went flat on the water, and then down,” he added.
The news comes three days after his co-defendant in a fraud case Stephen Chamberlain, the former vice-president of Autonomy, died after being hit by a car in Cambridgeshire, according to the report.
Acquitted of fraud charges
Mike Lynch, the founder of the enterprise software firm Autonomy, was involved in a legal battle with Hewlett Packard (HP) after being accused of inflating Autonomy’s value during its $11B sale.
Founded in 1996 as a spin-off from Cambridge Neurodynamics by Michael Lynch, David Tabizel, and Richard Gaunt, Autonomy specialises in computer-based fingerprint recognition
HP incurred an $8.8B write-down on Autonomy’s value within a year of acquiring it.
Lynch was extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States last year to face trial over the HP allegations. In June, he was acquitted of fraud charges after a three-month trial.
Lynch, born in 1965 in Ilford, East London, and raised near Chelmsford in Essex, England, attended the University of Cambridge.
He studied natural sciences, focusing on electronics, mathematics, and biology. He later obtained a Ph.D. in signals processing and communications.
