UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch one of seven missing after superyacht sinks in Italy

Billionaire Mike Lynch - recently acquitted of fraud after a decade-long battle - and his 18-year-old daughter are among seven people missing after the superyacht they were holidaying on was caught in a freak tornado and capsized off the coast of Italy.

British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch is missing after the superyacht sank. (Picture: Simon Dawson/Getty Images); [Top right] Emergency services bring a body bag ashore. (Igor Petyx/Reuters)

Mike Lynch, a British tech entrepreneur, is one of several people missing after a luxury superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily, according to Italian officials.

Six passengers, including Lynch and three other British nationals and two Americans, were missing, along with one crew member, according to the Italian Coast Guard. A total of 22 people were aboard the vessel when it was hit by a severe thunderstorm early Monday morning, the coast guard said.

There were 15 people, including a year-old baby girl, rescued. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was among the people who were rescued, according to a person familiar with the situation.

A leading figure in the U.K. tech industry, Lynch fought for more than a decade fraud charges against him by the US government. He was acquitted in June.

Karsten Borner, the captain of the boat that rescued survivors, told RAI TV that the “yacht tipped to its side and sank within a few minutes. It all happened in really little time.” There was no distress signal from the yacht, the coast guard said.

Survivors include Ayla Ronald, a lawyer who worked on Lynch’s US fraud case, her father Lin Ronald said. They were on the boat to celebrate the legal victory, said Ronald, who is based in New Zealand and works in the yachting industry.

The Bayesian sank when its mast was toppled in a freak tornado. Picture: X/Twitter

The British-registered yacht, named the Bayesian, was off the northern coast of the Italian island near the capital Palermo, according to ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.

A person with knowledge of the matter said the yacht was likely owned by Lynch. It was managed by London-based brokers Camper & Nicholsons.

Built in Italy in 2008 by the Perini Navi shipyard, the 184-ft yacht was able to accommodate up to 12 guests and 10 crew, according to YachtCharterFleet.

Yacht brokers valued the vessel at around $35 million.

Italian officials said rescue efforts were still under way Monday, and that the yacht sank about 164 feet deep.

Rescuers bring a body bag back to shore after the super yacht sunk. Picture: Twitter/X

A coast guard official said the yacht was anchored near the port of Porticello overnight Sunday when a storm hit the coast, creating a tornado-like column of air and water.

“It had laid anchor 700 meters from the marina and it was consumed by the storm,” a coast guard official said. “Divers are trying to reach the boat at the bottom of the sea.”

Lynch, 59 years old, founded software company Autonomy in the 1990s. The company deployed so-called Bayesian mathematics, which traces its roots to Thomas Bayes, an 18th century statistician and Presbyterian minister.

Autonomy was bought by American tech company Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. The deal has since been described as one of the worst in Silicon Valley history.

Hewlett-Packard took an $8.8 billion writedown related to the deal in 2012 and said it was duped into overpaying because of what it said appeared to be wilfully inflated financial statements. In 2018, the U.S. government charged Lynch, who was also Autonomy’s CEO, with fraud.

Lynch was acquitted of criminal charges in June, ending the nearly 13-year saga.

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