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Who is Mike Lynch? The billionaire tech entrepreneur missing after sailing yacht Bayesian sinks in Italy

Once dubbed the ‘british bill gates’, mike lynch and his wife were valued at £852m in 2023, article bookmarked.

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British tech tycoon Mike Lynch is among the six people missing after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily , The Independent understands.

The 59-year-old is known for founding Invoke Capital and Autonomy Corporation and has been in the headlines after he was cleared of charges in a high-profile fraud case.

Mr Lynch was on the boat, named Bayesian, which sank in bad weather in the early hours of Monday near the Sicilian capital Palermo .

There were 12 guests and 10 crew on board - of whom 15 have been rescued including Mr Lynch’s wife, The Independent understands.

Sources have also confirmed that Mr Lynch is the owner of the vessel.

A body, believed to be that of the superyacht’s chef, has been found, according to local media, with pictures showing a body bag being brought to shore where ambulances were stationed.

Once dubbed the “British Bill Gates”, Mr Lynch and his wife Angela Bacares were valued at £852m in 2023 by the Sunday Times Rich List.

His disappearance following the superyacht sinking comes just weeks after he was cleared of all charges by a US jury related to the sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.

Mr Lynch founded Autonomy in 1996 using technology he developed as a Cambridge student. HP claimed, just a year after the sale, that Mr Lynch had used accounting tricks to artificially inflate its value before the sale

He was then extradited to the US last May for a trial that acquitted him on all 15 counts over the 11-billion dollar (£8.64 billion) purchase of his company.

Mr Lynch said on Radio 4 that being acquitted was “indescribable” and believed he could only clear his name because of his huge wealth.

He said most people, even if they sold all their assets, would run out of funds in a matter of months, to cover the legal fees, a situation that he said “has to change.”

Have you been affected by this story? Email [email protected]

Born near Chelmsford, Essex, to a nurse mother and father fireman, Mr Lynch said his father regretted not having the chance to attend university. He told LeadersIn: "He realised the importance of education so that was something that was very much fostered in my home.”

When he was 11 years old, he won a scholarship to study at Bancroft's School in Woodford Green and then studied natural sciences at the University of Cambridge.

He set up his first company in the 1980s, with a £2,000 loan from the manager of a band, producing audio products for the recording industry, The Guardian reported.

Mr Lynch has a string of accolades including being awarded an OBE for services to enterprise in 2006. That same year, he was appointed to the BBC’s board. He was also elected to former prime minister David Cameron’s council for science and technology in 2011.

A representative for Dr Lynch declined to comment.

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Who was onboard tech mogul Mike Lynch's Bayesian yacht?

Topic: Disasters, Accidents and Emergency Incidents

Six people are missing, including a man dubbed the British Bill Gates, after a luxury yacht sank off the Sicilian coast.

British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch — freshly acquitted from a decade-long trial — had invited his work colleagues aboard a trip through the Mediterranean coast when a freak storm saw the yacht sink within moments.

Fifteen people escaped from the sinking vessel. The search for the missing continues.

Here's what we know so far: 

What happened?

The Italian coastguard said the yacht — the Bayesian — was anchored off the shore of port city Porticello, near the Sicilian capital Palermo, when it was hit by bad weather sometime after 4am on Monday, local time. 

Eyewitnesses said it vanished quickly beneath the waves shortly before dawn.

Managers of the sailing vessel Bayesian, Camper & Nicholsons, confirmed to the ABC that the Bayesian encountered severe weather and subsequently sank. 

"Our priority is assisting with the ongoing search and providing all necessary support to the rescued passengers and crew," they said. 

"The wind was very strong. Bad weather was expected, but not of this magnitude," a coastguard official told Reuters.

Sicily's civil protection agency head, Salvo Cocina, said a waterspout — a tornado over the water — could have struck the yacht.

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time," Mr Cocina added. 

Storms and heavy rainfall had swept down Italy in recent days after weeks of scorching heat, lifting the temperature of the Mediterranean Sea to record levels and raising the risk of extreme weather conditions, experts told Reuters.

"The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 degrees Celsius, which is almost 3 degrees more than normal. This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms," meteorologist Luca Mercalli said.

Rescuers recover the body of one of the people aboard the Bayesian.  ( AP: Lucio Ganci )

Captain Karsten Borner of the Sir Robert Baden Powell vessel told journalists he noticed the Bayesian nearby during the storm, but after it calmed he saw a red flare and realised the ship had simply disappeared.

Mr Borner said he and a crew member boarded their tender and found a lifeboat with 15 people, some of them injured, who they then took aboard and alerted the coast guard.

Search crews, including helicopters and divers, are continuing to search the wreckage, lying at a depth of 49 metres.

Specialist divers reached the ship on Monday but access was limited due to objects in the way, the fire brigade said.

The UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch is deploying a team of four inspectors to Italy to conduct a preliminary assessment.

The Foreign Commonwealth and Development office said it was "providing consular support to a number of British nationals and their families".

Sicilian prosecutors have also opened an investigation into the event. 

Who is missing?

Lawyer Chris Morvillo (left), entrepreneur Mike Lynch, and Morgan Stanley chairman Jonathan Bloomer are among the missing. 

There were 12 passengers and 10 crew members aboard the yacht. 

Mr Cocina said the crew and passengers hailed from a variety of countries, including Britain, the United States, Antigua, France, Germany, Ireland, Myanmar, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain.

Of the 22, one man is confirmed dead and another six people are still missing. 

They are believed to be inside the hull, fire rescue spokesperson Luca Cari said.

Fabio Cefalù, a fisherman who said he responded to a flare from the vessel but found it sunk, said he stayed at the site for three hours without finding anyone.

"I think they are inside, all the missing people," he said.

Rescue teams recovered the body of the yacht's onboard chef on Monday, identified as Antiguan citizen Ricardo Thomas.

The still missing people include: 

• Mr Lynch's 18-year-old daughter, Hannah 
• Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of global financial services company Morgan Stanley International
• Chris Morvillo , a lawyer at the British multinational law firm Clifford Chance. He worked on Mr Lynch's lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard
• The identities of the remaining two missing are still unconfirmed

Who was rescued? 

Fifteen people escaped from the sinking ship. 

Eight have been hospitalised and others were taken to a nearby hotel.

Charlotte Golunski was among those rescued, recalling the harrowing moments she held her child Sofia above the waves.  ( Supplied: Facebook  )

Among those rescued were:

• Mr Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, who was the owner of the yacht
• Charlotte Golunski and her one-year-old daughter, Sofia. Ms Golunski is a partner at Mr Lynch's firm, Invoke Capital. She says she momentarily lost hold of Sofia in the water but managed to hold her up above the waves until the lifeboat was inflated
• Ms Golunski's husband James Emslie
• New Zealand captain of the yacht James Catfield. He told Italian newspaper La Repubblica the crew didn't see the storm coming
• A lone Dutch citizen was identified by the Dutch foreign ministry as being rescued, but was not identified

Who is Mike Lynch?

Mr Lynch, once hailed as Britain’s king of technology, was recently freed from a Silicon Valley lawsuit that tarnished his legacy. 

The 59-year-old Cambridge-educated mathematician created Autonomy , a search engine that could pore through emails and other internal business documents to help companies find vital information more quickly. 

He received the OBE for his innovation in 2006. 

He then sold the software to Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $US11 billion ($16 billion) in 2011, with Mr Lynch personally netting $US800 million. 

HP valued Autonomy at $US46 billion ($68 billion) in the months leading up to the deal.

Mike Lynch in 2019 leaving the High Court in London.  ( Reuters: Henry Nicholls/File Photo )

But the deal quickly turned sour after he was accused of forging the software's financial records to make the sale.

As part of a decades-long legal battle against HP, Mr Lynch was extradited to the UK on criminal fraud charges. 

He steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, asserting that he was being made a scapegoat for HP's own bungling. 

He was eventually cleared of all charges in June this year. 

Although he avoided a possible prison sentence, Lynch still faced a bill from a civil case in London that HP mostly won during 2022. Damages haven't been determined in that case, but HP is seeking $US4 billion. 

Following the San Francisco trial, Mr Lynch said he would return to the UK and do what he loved most: "[being with] my family and innovating in my field."

The holiday appeared to be something of a celebration after Mr Lynch's acquittal, with guests including some of the people who had stood by Lynch throughout the ordeal.

This picture shows the rescue operations off the Sicilian coast.  ( AP: Italian Coast Guard  )

In a separate act of tragedy, Mr Lynch's co-defendant in the trial, Stephen Chamberlain, died on Monday, after a road accident left him critically injured.

Mr Chamberlain — Autonomy's former vice-president of finance alongside Mr Lynch — was hit by a car in Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning and had been placed on life support. 

What is the Bayesian?

The luxury yacht is 56m long sailboat, with a 75m mast labelled as the tallest aluminium mast in the world.

It was previously named Salute when it flew under a Dutch flag.

The yacht, built in 2008 by the Italian firm Perini Navi, can accommodate up to 12 guests in six suites and a crew of 10, according to online specialist yacht sites. It was last refitted in 2020.

Online charter sites listed it for rent for up to 195,000 euros (about $AU 321,000) a week. 

This picture taken on Sunday shows the Bayesian (left) and the Duch sailboat Sir Robert Baden Powell anchored off the coast line.   ( AP: Fabio La Bianca/Baia Santa Nicolicchia )

The ship also won a string of awards for its design. 

Ms Golunski said the yacht had travelled through the Aeolian Islands, Milazzo and Cefalù before sinking. 

It is likely the yacht's name would resonate with Mr Lynch because his PhD thesis and the software that made his fortune was based on Bayesian theory.

Mike Lynch just won a dramatic 12-year legal battle over his tech company. Weeks later, he and his top lawyer drowned in a superyacht while celebrating.

• Mike Lynch won an unexpected jury acquittal after a dramatic 12-year legal saga.
• HP accused him of cooking the books of his company, Autonomy, to make it seem worth billions more.
• He finally won — and then he, his lawyer, and his co-defendant all died within days.

In 2011, Mike Lynch was the toast of the tech world.

Hailed as Britain's Bill Gates, Lynch sold Autonomy, his groundbreaking data management company, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion.

Shareholders and business commentators were puzzled about what HP, a hardware company, would do with Autonomy, a software company — and why it was worth $11 billion. HP's executives said at the time that Autonomy had the potential to transform HP and usher the Silicon Valley titan into a new generation.

None of that happened. A year after the acquisition, HP wrote down $8.8 billion of the purchase value and accused Lynch of lying about Autonomy's finances.

The claim led to a vicious decadelong series of legal disputes.

Another Autonomy executive, Sushovan Hussain, was convicted of fraud in 2018 and sentenced to five years in prison. Federal prosecutors brought criminal charges against Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain, the former vice president of finance.

Lynch's court battles concluded with a 3-month criminal trial in San Francisco. After just two days of deliberation, jurors found Lynch and Chamberlain not guilty on all counts.

"The truth has finally prevailed," his lawyer Charles Morvillo said.

Within months, Lynch, Chamberlain, and Morvillo were all dead.

A takeover doomed from the start

Lynch, who studied neural networks for his Ph.D. at Cambridge University, spun off Autonomy from a previous company, Cambridge Neurodynamics, in 1996.

Using sophisticated algorithms, Autonomy allowed users to organize and search through large amounts of unstructured data. It was a bright spot in Britain's tech industry and was listed on the country's stock market index.

According to the New York Times , Autonomy's clients included Oracle, Adobe, Cisco, and HP itself.

But HP's purchase of Autonomy was controversial. The hardware company's CEO, Léo Apotheker, who had been in the position for less than a year , tried to shift the company's direction. HP had struggled to sell printers and servers as part of its traditional hardware business. Apotheker wanted to spin off HP's personal computing division and make a big bet on moving the company into software, which had higher margins.

Analysts hated the idea. Shareholders sued. HP's value dropped by more than half. The company's board fired Apotheker within weeks of the decision to buy Autonomy, before the deal even closed.

Related stories

His successor, Meg Whitman, fired Lynch and wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8 billion, indicating HP paid nearly four times what it should have. New York Times columnist James B. Stewart floated the case that it was the worst acquisition in corporate history — even worse than AOL's ill-fated purchase of Time Warner.

In a stunning move, HP accused Lynch of fraud the following year. The company alleged he and Hussain, a former CFO, inflated Autonomy's sales figures. The FBI and the UK's Serious Fraud Office both opened investigations.

Lynch fervently denied accusations of wrongdoing. He pointed out that Autonomy was audited by Deloitte, which hadn't previously found issues. According to Lynch, HP strangled Autonomy with mismanagement and bureaucracy that pushed out employees and stymied sales.

The culture at HP, Lynch said, was poisonous.

"It was like boarding a plane, realizing the engine is on fire, and then going up to the cockpit only to find that the pilots are having a fight," he told The Telegraph at the time .

According to The New York Times, the shareholder lawsuit against HP turned up the company's own KPMG-prepared due diligence report. It found flashing warning signs in Autonomy's financial transparency, but Apotheker moved forward with the takeover anyway, deciding that Autonomy's potential was worth it.

A legal morass

The UK's Serious Fraud Office announced in January 2015 that it closed its investigation of Autonomy, finding insufficient evidence for legal action, though it referred some issues to the US Department of Justice.

In the subsequent months, HP and Lynch sued each other in the UK. As those cases wound their way through the British court system, US prosecutors continued investigating HP's purchase of Autonomy. In 2016, they brought fraud charges against Sushovan Hussain, who was found guilty in a 2018 jury trial. British regulators formally banned him from the financial industry earlier this year, after he completed a 5-year sentence served in the US.

HP unloaded itself of Autonomy altogether, selling parts of it in 2016 and 2017.

In November 2018, Justice Department prosecutors went directly after Lynch and Chamberlain, who had served as Autonomy's vice president of finance.

According to their indictment, Lynch and Chamberlain falsified financial documents, lied to auditors and regulators, and suppressed the voices of people who criticized Autonomy's financial practices.

Lynch was no longer looking at civil fights over money. He was facing the prospect of up to 20 years in prison.

For years, Lynch fought extradition to the US. Powerful in British political circles — he had advised David Cameron and served on the boards of the BBC and the British Museum — he and his lawyers argued that his legal issues should play out in the UK, not the US. American criminal laws were unfairly stacked against him, his lawyers said.

HP's lawsuit against Lynch — still churning in the background — finally went to trial in 2019. Apotheker testified he would have abandoned the Autonomy acquisition if he had a better understanding of its finances. Lynch advanced the argument that the whole morass was orchestrated by Whitman, Apotheker's successor, who harbored political ambitions (she ran for governor in California and is currently the US ambassador to Kenya) and wanted to shift the blame for Autonomy's failures to someone else.

Robert Hildyard, the judge who oversaw the case, ruled mostly in HP's favor. In a 2022 decision that ran over 1,700 pages, he wrote that HP overpaid for Autonomy due to deceit from Lynch and Hussein. Hildyard hadn't yet decided how much they would owe in damages, but he wrote it would be "substantially less" than the $5 billion HP asked for.

While he wasn't fighting legal battles, Lynch continued to be an entrepreneur. He founded a venture capital firm, Invoke Capital, and invested in and helped run the cybersecurity firm Darktrace, which,  according to Politico, has deep ties  to Britain's intelligence agencies.

Financial disclosures Lynch filed last year as part of his criminal case indicated he was worth about $450 million.

The criminal trial

The UK finally extradited Lynch to the US in May 2023 , where he prepared for his trial — alongside Chamberlain as a co-defendant — while under house arrest in San Francisco.

Lynch had a top-shelf legal team, but after the British court loss and Hussain's conviction, the chances of an acquittal seemed bleak.

Lynch testified at the end of his three-month trial, which began in March, telling jurors he wasn't involved in day-to-day financial oversight of the company. Misunderstandings, he said, could be chalked up to the differences between British and American accounting practices.

"A lot of what we've been looking at is like peering through the door of a kitchen and seeing the sausage-making machine, and that's how it really works," he told jurors, according to the Times of London . "If you take the microscope into even the most spotless kitchen, you'd find bacteria. If it wasn't there, that'd be something very abnormal. I don't think Autonomy was any different."

Jurors believed him. In June, they declared Lynch not guilty of the 15 charges against him, clearing Chamberlain as well.

Charles Morvillo, one of Lynch's lawyers in the trial — as well as in the preceding decade of legal disputes — praised the jury's "rejection of the government's profound overreach in this case."

"This verdict closes the book on a relentless 13-year effort to pin HP's well-documented ineptitude on Dr. Lynch," Morvillo said in a joint statement with his attorney colleague Brian Heberlig. "Thankfully, the truth has finally prevailed."

In an interview with the Times of London after the trial , Lynch reflected on how, with a great burden lifted at the age of 59, he could remake his life.

He mourned the deaths of his brother and mother, who both passed ahead of the criminal trial. He mused about using his fortune to start a British version of The Innocence Project, which prevents wrongful convictions in the US.

"Now you have a second life," he told the Times. "The question is, what do you want to do with it?"

But first, a celebration. Lynch, his wife Angela Bacares, one of his two daughters, his attorney Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and several others went on a superyacht, The Bayesian , which was anchored outside Sicily and owned by Bacares.

Chamberlain moved back to the UK. While running near his home, a driver hit him with a car . He died in a hospital on Saturday.

On August 19, a sudden storm struck The Bayesian. The yacht capsized.

Of its 22 passengers, 15, including Bacares, were rescued.

But rescuers have pulled 5 corpses from the wreckage, including those of Morvillo and Lynch . A sixth remains trapped inside the boat. Lynch's daughter Hannah remains missing.

• Main content

Money Report

British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and Morgan Stanley's Bloomer retrieved from yacht wreckage

By ryan browne,cnbc • published august 22, 2024 • updated 42 mins ago.

• The body of Mike Lynch, known as the "British Bill Gates," has been retrieved from the Bayesian superyacht that sunk off the coast of Sicily.
• Lynch's 18-year-old daughter Hannah remains missing.
• As the founder of enterprise software firm Autonomy, Lynch became the target of a protracted legal battle with Hewlett Packard after they accused him of inflating his company's value in an $11.7 billion sale.
• Later Thursday, it emerged that Morgan Stanley International Chair Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy were also found dead in the yacht wreckage.

LONDON — The body of British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch, 59, has been retrieved from the wreckage of a yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC on Thursday, confirming earlier reporting by Sky News.

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Lynch's daughter, Hannah, remains unaccounted for, according to the source, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the situation. Sky News earlier reported that five bodies pulled from the wreck had been identified by the Italian coast guard, and that Lynch was among the dead.

Later on Thursday, it emerged that Morgan Stanley International Chair Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy were also found dead in the yacht wreckage. Bloomer is also the chair of insurance firm Hiscox.

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"We are deeply shocked and saddened by Jonathan and Judy's tragic deaths. Our deepest sympathies go out to their family and friends at this devastating time," Aki Hussain, Hiscox CEO, said in a statement.

"It was a privilege to have known Jonathan and to have benefitted from his generosity and wisdom over the last year in his role as Chair of Hiscox."

"His deep experience across our industry and in the broader business arena, combined with his personal values, made him both an excellent Chair and a person I was proud to know and work with. His advice and support were immensely valuable to me, and he will be dearly missed," Hussain added.

Perplexity AI plans to start running ads in fourth quarter as AI-assisted search gains popularity

Mike Lynch, man once dubbed ‘Britain's Bill Gates,' dies at age 59

Yacht gathering was celebration of lynch's acquittal.

Lynch, who was reported missing Monday, was one of 22 passengers aboard the Bayesian superyacht, which capsized while anchored in the small fishing village of Porticello, in the province of Palermo in Italy.

The trip on the Bayesian is thought to have marked a celebration of Lynch's acquittal. Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo — who was reported missing after the superyacht sank — represented Lynch in the case, while Bloomer — who serves in a nonexecutive role as chair of Morgan Stanley's European branch — testified for the defense.

Morvillo's wife, jewelry designer Neda Morvillo, is also among those still missing.

On Wednesday, Salvatore Cocina, head of the civil protection agency in Sicily, confirmed to NBC News that five bodies had been recovered from the wreckage of the yacht. The only person confirmed dead by authorities so far has been Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian-Antiguan chef.

CNBC has contacted the Italian coast guard and is awaiting a response.

Lynch was founder of enterprise software firm Autonomy. He became the target of a protracted legal battle  with Hewlett Packard after the firm accused Lynch of inflating Autonomy's value in an $11.7 billion sale. HP took an $8.8 billion write-down on the value of the company within a year of buying it.

Lynch  was acquitted in June of fraud charges  in a surprise victory in U.S. court following a trial that lasted for three months. He had faced charges of wire fraud and conspiracy for allegedly scheming to inflate Autonomy's revenue. Lynch denied wrongdoing and told jurors HP botched Autonomy's integration.

Lynch was also founder of Invoke Capital, a venture capital firm endorsing European tech startups. He became a key voice supporting the U.K. technology industry, backing key names like cybersecurity firm Darktrace and legal tech firm Luminance.

'One of the great modern British tech entrepreneurs'

Tributes were paid to Lynch following news of his death.

Russ Shaw, founder of technology industry groups Tech London Advocates and Global Tech Advocates, said Lynch "leaves a legacy as one of the great modern British tech entrepreneurs."

"His ability to understand how tech can solve big challenges, and then successfully commercialise it was truly unique" Shaw said in a statement emailed to CNBC. "Mike will rightly be remembered for his work in nurturing some of Britain's great tech companies, including Darktrace, Luminance and Sophia Genetics."

The Royal Academy of Engineering, which made Lynch a fellow in 2008, said its trustee board, fellows and staff are "deeply saddened" to learn of his death and "send our profound condolences to his family."

"We have fond memories of the active role he played [as a fellow] in the past, as a mentor, donor and former Council member. He was also one of the inaugural members on the Enterprise Committee," the academy said on the social media platform X. "Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time."

Lord John Browne, former CEO of energy firm BP, said in a post on X that Lynch "should be remembered as the person who catalysed a breed of deep tech entrepreneurs in the U.K. His ideas and his personal vision were a powerful contribution to science and technology in both Britain and globally."

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World News | Mike Lynch co-defendant hit by car days before…

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World News | Mike Lynch co-defendant fatally hit by car days before superyacht sinking

Chamberlain, who was once the vice president of finance at Lynch’s former company, Autonomy, was out for a run on Saturday when he was hit by a car in Cambridgeshire, England, his lawyer Gary Lincenberg told CNN.

He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

“He was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity. We deeply miss him,” he said.

“Steve fought successfully to clear his good name at trial earlier this year, and his good name now lives on through his wonderful family,” Lincenberg concluded.

The driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is cooperating with law enforcement, BBC News reported.

The deadly incident came just days before Lynch’s superyacht, nicknamed the Bayesian, sank off the coast of Porticello , near Palermo. Lynch had been celebrating his recent acquittal in one of Silicon Valley’s biggest-ever fraud cases when a waterspout formed in the exact spot where the 184-foot vessel had been moored.

Lynch, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, were still missing on Tuesday alongside four others. They were identified as Christopher Morvillo of Clifford Chance, who served as Lynch’s lawyer, and Morvillo’s wife, Neda. Chairman of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer, also the former head of the Autonomy audit committee, and his wife, Judy, were also unaccounted for more than 24 hours after the sinking.

Lynch — once hailed as Britain’s king of technology — and Chamberlain were recently co-defendants in a fraud trial over the 2011 sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. They were accused of cooking their books to make the sale happen, and both faced one count of conspiracy and 14 counts of wire fraud.

In June, a jury in San Francisco acquitted the pair of all charges.

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World News | 5 bodies found, 1 still missing during search of Mike Lynch’s sunken superyacht

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Fifth body recovered from Mike Lynch's Bayesian super yacht

A fifth body has been recovered by divers and the Italian coastguard from tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s super yacht in Sicily with one person still missing after the vessel capsized in a storm

• 08:09, 22 Aug 2024
• Updated 09:13, 22 Aug 2024

A fifth body has been recovered from tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s super yacht in Sicily.

Divers and members of the coastguard and fire service were seen transporting a body bag from the wreck site just before 9am local time. The grim discovery means five missing yacht guests have now been found, and one remains missing .

Six people, including Mr Lynch, were unaccounted for after the vessel – named Bayesian – sank at around 5am on Monday . Salvatore Cocina, the head of Sicily’s civil protection agency, confirmed that five bodies were found on Wednesday and the whereabouts of the missing sixth person remains unknown.

Four of those five bodies were retrieved yesterday and now the other has also been taken to the port while the search continues for the other person missing following the capsizing of the vessel in a storm.

Identities of the recovered bodies have not been confirmed officially by authorities with body bags having been seen as they were taken to the port of Porticello.

Among those also named as missing were Mr Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah; Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer; his wife, Judy Bloomer; Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo; and his wife, Neda Morvillo. The body of Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the Bayesian superyacht, was recovered at the scene of the sinking on Monday.

Of the 22 passengers and crew on board, 15 – including Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares – were rescued after escaping onto a lifeboat. The captain of a yacht, the Sir Robert BP, who helped to rescue them, described how those aboard his vessel spotted the distress flare set off from a life raft.

Karsten Borner said his crew noticed the Bayesian had disappeared before a passenger spotted the flare. He told Sky News: “We couldn’t see them any more and they disappeared from the radar, we were busy keeping our own ship sailing. We couldn’t see the ship again so we were aware something was very wrong.”

He said it was only when the tender set out that they found the life raft. Mr Borner continued: “It turned out to be the life raft, a 12-person life raft with 15 people inside including one baby. They stepped over to our tender and we brought them back to our ship. There we took good care of them, gave them dry clothes, towels, blankets, tea and coffee and so on and took care of them.”

One of the survivors, British tourist Charlotte Emsley, held her one-year-old daughter, Sofia, above the waves to stop her from drowning. Dr Domenico Cipolla, of Di Cristina Children’s Hospital in Palermo where the mother and child were taken, said: “The child and the mother went to the hotel near Porticello on Tuesday, they are both in a good condition.

“Obviously the mother and the husband were so shaken by what has happened, it was a tragedy for them. She told me that two minutes after falling asleep with her baby they were in the water, she did not understand how this happened, it went dark. Her partner was not with her, he was in another room. She held the child high in her arms above the waves, for a few seconds the baby was in the water but she saved her. She sometimes cried for her friends in the hospital.”

A team of four British inspectors from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) arrived in Porticello on Wednesday to look at the site of the sinking. The Italian Coastguard said the MAIB is not involved in the search for the missing people, and it has not been requested to assist.

The ship’s captain, James Cutfield, was reportedly questioned by authorities for two hours as they began speaking to all crew members. A helicopter was previously drafted in to help the search effort, and divers from the local fire service have been seen entering the water with torches attached to their headgear. Fire crews from the Vigili del Fuoco said they have been accessing the vessel through natural entrances, without making openings.

Remotely controlled underwater vehicles have been used, with naval units and cave divers also taking part in the search, the Italian Coastguard has said. Bayesian was moored around half a mile off the coast of Porticello when it sank at about 5am local time on Monday as the area was hit by a storm. Vincenzo Zagarola, of the Italian Coastguard, previously said the missing tourists were feared dead.

The wreckage of the Bayesian is resting on the seabed off the coast at a depth of 50 metres (164ft). Fire crews described the operation as “complex”, with divers limited to 12-minute underwater shifts. Survivors have been recuperating at a hotel complex in Porticello, where authorities were gathering witness statements. The boat trip was a celebration of Mr Lynch’s acquittal in a fraud case in the US.

The businessman, who founded software giant Autonomy in 1996, was cleared in June of carrying out a massive fraud relating to its 11 billion US dollar (£8.64 billion) sale to US company Hewlett Packard. The Financial Times reported that Mr Bloomer appeared at trial as a defence witness for Mr Lynch, while media reports suggest the pair are close friends. In a separate incident, Mr Lynch’s co-defendant in his US fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.

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EasyJet crew ‘thrown into walls’ after plane hit by turbulence on London flight

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An EasyJet holiday flight was forced to make an emergency landing after being hit by turbulence over the Mediterranean .

The horror turbulence hit shortly after the Airbus A320 bound for London Gatwick had taken off from Corfu Airport, Greece , at lunchtime on Monday.

The journey was suddenly interrupted about 20 minutes into the flight.

While cruising at 485mph at 28,000ft near Italy , the aircraft was rocked by violent turbulence.

Two cabin crew who were preparing food for the passengers were smashed against the plane walls, MailOnline reports.

Their injuries were severe enough for the pilots to decide to make an emergency landing at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, where the plane was met on the tarmac by crew.

An EasyJet spokesperson told Metro.co.uk: ‘Flight EZY8120 from Corfu to London Gatwick on 19 August experienced turbulence which unfortunately resulted in two cabin crew members being injured.

‘As a result the Captain took the decision to divert to Rome where the crew members were met by medical services. 

‘The safety and wellbeing of our customers and crew is easyJet’s highest priority and our pilots are trained to manage incidences of turbulence. 

‘The flight landed normally in Rome where customers were supported in the terminal and a replacement crew and aircraft were arranged to continue the flight to London Gatwick.’

Airport staff and EasyJet crew met the plane at the Rome airport when it landed, and the injured flight attendants were given medical attention.

The emergency comes as all eyes are on Sicily after Mike Lynch’s Bayesian luxury yacht sank off the coast of Porticello after a freak tornado on Monday morning.

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Gemma Collins says she is 'lucky to have survived' storm that sank Mike Lynch's yacht off Sicily

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Gemma Collins says she and her teenage nephew are “lucky to be alive” after getting caught up in the terrifying storm that hit Sicily on Monday. 

UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch - who is worth an estimated £852m and has been referred to as the “Bill Gates of Britain” - is still missing along with his 18-year-old daughter Hannah after his luxury superyacht capsized near Porticello in the early hours of August 19.

Six people, understood to be four Britons and two Americans, remain unaccounted for while 15 passengers were rescued by a nearby ship including a British mother and her one-year-old daughter. One body has been recovered. 

Officials say the luxury vessel, the Bayesian, was hit by a freak “tornado” before sinking 160ft to the bottom of the sea bed.

Former The Only Way Is Essex star Collins, 43, has now shared how she had been left “shaken” after she and 15-year-old Hayden - who had been onboard another luxury ship - were left stranded at sea for four hours.  

Taking to Instagram afterwards, Collins posted an image of her posing on a yacht in the Mediterranean and reassured her 2.2m followers that they were okay.

She wrote: “Holiday update. My heartfelt condolences to the people and families involved in the tragic disaster at sea in Sicily.”

“I was very lucky me and my nephew to have survived the storm at sea. I am shaken and returning to the UK tomorrow, god was on our side today. We was stuck for 4 hours can you imagine what was going through my mind. Thank you @bluediamondcruise for getting us back safely.”

The Essex-native also also shared a video from the boat, in which she and the crew were shown departing the port in sunny weather, with the caption “it started amazing.”

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Another clip showed them back at dock celebrating their survival in the pouring rain, and ended with a photo of Collins, her relative and the crew, embracing while wrapped in blankets.

“We made it back but very shaken,” Gemma wrote across the image.

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