Mike Lynch among missing after yacht sinks off Sicily

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Mike Lynch, one of the UK’s best-known tech entrepreneurs, is among those missing after a luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily in bad weather.

Lynch, the former chief executive of Autonomy, was acquitted of criminal charges by a jury in San Francisco in June, vindicating the 59-year-old entrepreneur after a 12-year legal battle over the software group’s $11bn sale to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

Among the passengers on Lynch’s 56-metre yacht Bayesian were members of his legal team and their families, who had been invited on the trip to celebrate the courtroom victory.

Jonathan Bloomer, chair of insurance group Hiscox and Morgan Stanley International, who appeared at the trial as a witness for the defence, was also on board and is one of those missing, according to local Italian authorities and people familiar with the matter.

Christopher Morvillo of law firm Clifford Chance, who represented Lynch, is also missing. Six guests in total are missing and one member of the crew is confirmed dead.

Another Clifford Chance lawyer, Ayla Ronald, was among 15 of the 22 guests and crew whom the authorities said were rescued from the stricken vessel.

Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah is also missing while his wife Angela Bacares was rescued.

The yacht incident came on the same day as the death was confirmed of Lynch’s co-defendant in the US fraud case, Stephen Chamberlain, who was hit by a car in Cambridgeshire.

Gary Lincenberg, an attorney who represented Chamberlain in the case, said Autonomy’s former vice-president of finance, whom he described as a “courageous man with unparalleled integrity”, had been fatally struck by a car while out running on Saturday.

Following the courtroom verdict, Lynch had said he was “elated” and was “looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field”.

David Yelland, a communications adviser who worked with Lynch, said: “To think Mike Lynch might have lost his life just as he began to rebuild it is devastating for all those that know him. His entire life is one of beating the odds in the most extraordinary of situations, we must pray he does so again.” 

A spokesperson for Lynch declined to comment.

The Italian coast guard said Bayesian sank to a depth of approximately 50 metres off the coast of Palermo.

Giuseppe D’Agostino, mayor of Santa Flavia, a village on the coast close to where the vessel sank, said the search had not stopped. “The community is shaken. Everyone is helping,” he told the Financial Times.

“I spoke to some survivors. They are shocked. They didn’t have the strength to speak,” he added.

Another survivor was Charlotte Golunski, a partner at Lynch’s venture firm Invoke Capital, along with her husband James Emsilie and one-year-old daughter. She told Italian media that her family had left their cabin during the storm and headed for the deck.

Records indicate that Lynch’s family owned the yacht. Bayesian is owned by Isle of Man-registered company Revtom Limited, according to shipping database Equasis. Isle of Man filings show that Bacares is the sole shareholder of Revtom.

The Sunday Times rich list estimated Lynch’s family fortune at £500mn earlier this year.

The name Bayesian is likely to be a reference to the 18th-century English statistician Thomas Bayes, whose theory of statistics informed the search technology behind Autonomy’s software.

The yacht had been anchored at the small Italian island of Panarea, according to MarineTraffic, a boat tracking site. It then passed through the Aeolian Islands on its way to Palermo before being hit by what has been described as a “tornado”.

Luca Cari, a spokesperson for the Italian fire department, said divers and other rescue workers had been working at the scene since Monday morning.

“We arrived when the ship had already sunk,” he said, adding that the operation was complicated by the depth to which the boat had sunk. Cari said the body had been recovered outside the shipwreck. He declined to identify the victim.

The UK’s Department for Transport said the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch was deploying a team of four inspectors to Palermo to conduct a “preliminary assessment into the foundering”. The UK will lead the investigation because the vessel was flying the British flag.

Additional reporting by Michael Acton, Robert Wright, Robert Smith, Joshua Franklin and Jim Pickard