Mike Lynch, a British technology entrepreneur, is among those missing after the Bayesian superyacht sankin a freak storm off the northern coast of Sicily.
Rescuers are searching for Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18, as well as two other people with British citizenship and two with American citizenship, authorities said. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was among 15 people — including a 1-year-old girl— rescued. One person has been confirmed dead.
Who is Mike Lynch?
The son of a firefighter from County Cork and a nurse from County Tipperary in Ireland, Lynch received a doctorate from Cambridge University and made his fortune in tech.
He was once feted as Britain’s version of Bill Gates. He sold his company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011 — one of the biggest British tech deals at the time.
But he was subsequently accused of overvaluing the company and was charged in the United States with fraud. He spent years fighting legal battles before being acquitted by a jury in San Francisco in June.
The ill-fated voyage on the Bayesian was intended to be a celebration of his legal victory, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reported, and members of his legal team were among those on board. In a cruel coincidence, his co-defendant in the fraud case, Steve Chamberlain, died after being fatally struck by a car on Saturday while out running, Chamberlain’s attorney said.
The Bayesian
The British-flagged 183-foot luxury sailing yacht, Bayesian, is owned by Revtom, a firm controlled by Lynch’s wife Bacares and registered on the Isle of Man, documents show.
It tilted and sank after being hit by ferocious weather around 4 a.m. Monday. Its 75-meter aluminum mast was the tallest of its kind in the world, according to Italian shipbuilder Perini, who built the yacht in 2008.
The yacht sank to a depth of more than 160 feet; it is believed that some passengers might have been trapped in their rooms. The first attempt by cave divers to search inside the yacht was unsuccessful, local rescue authorities said, because furniture was obstructing access to the bridge.
The name Bayesian refers to a statistical theory that assigns probabilities, such as the chance of rain tomorrow, according to Merriam-Webster.
Lynch, who researched adaptive pattern recognition while at Cambridge, used the theory in his software to help companies sort troves of data.
Who else was on board the yacht?
Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International, and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance, were among those still missing after the yacht sank, Reuters reported, citing Salvatore Cocina, the head of the Civil Protection in Sicily. Their wives were also aboard, according to Italian authorities.
Rescuers picked up Charlotte Golunski, a colleague of Lynch’s, who saved her 1-year-old daughterfrom near-tragedy when she slipped from her mother’s grasp in the furious waves. Her husband, James Emslie, was also among the 15 people rescued, according to local media reports.