Tech Entrepreneur Mike Lynch Missing After Superyacht Sinks Off Sicily Coast
In a sudden storm, a superyacht carrying tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his colleagues sank off the coast of Sicily, leaving six passengers missing, including his daughter Hannah. The 59-year-old businessman, known as the “British Bill Gates” due to his success in the tech industry, had just been acquitted of massive fraud charges in the US.
Lynch was on board the luxury vessel moored off the coast of Porticello, east of Palermo, along with his wife, Angela Bacares, who was among the 15 people rescued. His daughter Hannah is among the six missing, according to Salvo Cocina, head of the Civil Protection Agency in Sicily.
The businessman, originally from Suffolk in east England, had a fortune of £500 million ($648 million) and was the founder of Autonomy, a software firm he sold to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. However, just a year later, HP reported a write-down of $8.8 billion, including $5 billion attributed to inflated data from Autonomy, leading to a decade-long fraud scandal.
Despite his acquittal, the fraud case is not closed, with the court still ruling on the billions of dollars in damages claimed by HP. Autonomy’s former CFO, Sushovan Hussain, was found guilty of fraud in 2018 and jailed for five years.
The shadow of Lynch’s legal troubles had weighed on the share prices of Darktrace, a cybersecurity and artificial intelligence group he founded. However, in a reversal of fortune, Darktrace accepted a $5.3 billion takeover offer from US private equity firm Thoma Bravo in April, sending its share price soaring.
A spokeswoman for Lynch declined to comment when contacted by AFP on Monday.
