Mike Lynch, the British tech tycoon who went missing after his luxury yacht suddenly sank off the coast of Sicily, was confirmed dead by Italian officials.
Lynch’s body was identified Thursday as one of five pulled from the wreckage of the Bayesian. Divers were still looking for the body of his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.
Fifteen people were rescued from the vessel when it sank just before sunrise Monday.
The body of the boat’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, was retrieved from the sea on Tuesday.
Among those presumed dead are Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda. Officials said they wouldn’t release the names of the recovered bodies until the families had identified them.
The group was celebrating Lynch’s acquittal on U.S. fraud charges after a yearslong saga involving the sale of his software company to Hewlett Packard for $11 billion.
Italian investigators searching the wreckage of the superyacht said it appeared largely intact, reporting that the 180-foot-long vessel was lying on its side on the sea floor.
Lynch had been celebrating his acquittal on U.S. fraud charges. Photo: Jason Alden for WSJ
As rescue teams search for Lynch’s daughter, investigators turned to the many questions surrounding the sinking of such a large vessel.
Maritime experts said that the yacht’s giant mast, which stretched nearly 240 feet into the sky, could have been a factor in its rapid sinking.
The mast could have snapped in the storm, causing it to fall and damage the hull, or could have been uprooted by strong winds if not tightly secured.
The Bayesian’s mast could have fallen on the hull, damaging it, or could have been uprooted from its base by the strong winds if the stays weren’t tight enough.
“That would have made a gaping hole and water could have rushed in,” said Takis Tsakos, founder of Athens-based Yachtways GP, which rents out luxury yachts in the Mediterranean. “It was also a relaxed evening—doors and windows could have been open with more water coming in as the boat tilted,” Tsakos added. “These will be determined when the yacht is pulled out of the water.”
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 known as a waterspout. The crew apparently had little warning and there was no distress signal from the yacht, the coast guard said.
Born to Irish parents and raised in Ilford, east London, Michael Richard Lynch attended private school on a scholarship before studying at the University of Cambridge.
He would go on to found software company Autonomy in the 1990s. A decade later, and with the company’s stock soaring, Lynch became the U.K.’s first internet billionaire, dubbed by the national media as the British answer to Bill Gates.
Autonomy was bought by American tech company Hewlett Packard in 2011, in a deal later described as one of the worst in Silicon Valley history.
The Hewlett Packard CEO who approved the deal resigned within a year. Lynch also left the company in 2012.
Hewlett Packard took an $8.8 billion write-down later that year and said it was duped into overpaying.
In 2018, Lynch was charged by the U.S. government over allegation that he and his lieutenants had used false and misleading documents to make Autonomy more attractive to a potential purchaser. He unsuccessfully fought extradition to the U.S.
Lynch was acquitted of criminal charges in June, ending the nearly 13-year saga.
The south Italy cruise was planned as a celebration of the courtroom victory, according to people familiar with the matter.
Write to Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com and Gareth Vipers at gareth.vipers@wsj.com
