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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.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah is also missing while his wife Angela Bacares was rescued, according to local Italian authorities and people familiar with the matter. Four others are also missing after the 56m yacht, Bayesian, sank in bad weather, while one member of the crew is confirmed dead.
Camper and Nicholsons, managers of Bayesian, said the yacht “encountered severe weather and subsequently sank” near Palermo in the early hours of Monday morning.
On board were 12 guests and 10 crew, of whom 15 have been rescued by the Italian coast guard.
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.
Following the verdict, Lynch 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”.
A spokesperson for Lynch declined to comment.
“To think Mike Lynch might have lost his life just as he began to rebuild it is devastating for all those that know him,” said David Yelland, a communications adviser who worked with the entrepreneur. “His entire life is one of beating the odds in the most extraordinary of situations, we must pray he does so again.”
The Italian coast guard said Bayesian sank to a depth of approximately 50 metres.
The 15 people rescued were British, American and Canadian. Eight were transferred to local hospitals.
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.
A survivor was reported to be 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 suggest 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 was last anchored at the small Italian island of Panarea, according to MarineTraffic, a boat tracking site. It passed through the Aeolian Islands while on its way to Palermo before it was 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.
The UK Foreign Office said: “We are providing consular support to a number of British nationals and their families following an incident in Sicily, and are in contact with the local authorities.”
Additional reporting by Jim Pickard
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