UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch is among six people missing after his superyacht The Bayesian sank in a storm off the coast of Sicily, with one man confirmed to have died.
There were 22 people on board the 184ft luxury yacht owned by Lynch, 59, when it was reportedly caught up in a waterspout – a tornado formed over water.
Sources say 15 people were rescued, including a one-year-old child and Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares.
The British-flagged vessel – named after Bayesian Theory, which formed the basis of Lynch’s PhD thesis and the technology of his former company Autonomy – was anchored 700 metres from the Italian island’s harbour when it was caught up in bad weather.
Lynch was recently cleared of fraud – and a potential 20 years behind bars – in a San Francisco trial over the 2011 sale of Cambridge firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11.1 billion in 2018.
The former UK government adviser – who also sat on the boards of the BBC and the British Library – was accused of inflating sales and misleading regulators as well as HP, which wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8bn soon after the deal went through.
He was extradited to the United States and effectively placed under house arrest while the trial ran its course.
Danny Fortson, US West Coast correspondent for The Sunday Times, told Sky News that Lynch was looking forward to relaxing with his family after his acquittal, which he did not expect.
In his first interview following his acquittal, the father-of-two – who has a lung condition – told the Sunday Times: “I have various medical things that would have made it very difficult to survive.
“I’d had to say goodbye to everything and everyone, because I didn’t know if I’d ever be coming back.
In 2022 a UK high court judge ruled that Lynch had defrauded HP following a six-year civil case. Before the disaster, he had said he intended to appeal the ruling.
British CEO to resign a year after OneWeb’s £2.8bn French merger