Those still missing after a luxury yacht went down during a storm off the Sicilian coast include a prominent New York attorney, the chair of Morgan Stanley International and a man nicknamed “Britain’s Bill Gates.” British technology magnate Mike Lynch was celebrating his recent acquittal in one of Silicon Valley’s largest-ever fraud cases when his 184-foot mega yacht, nicknamed the “Bayesian,” was struck by a waterspout off Porticello, near Palermo, on Monday around 4 a.m.
It was was carrying a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers when it sank. Since then, one person was found dead while another 15 were rescued. On Tuesday, divers resumed the search for Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, as well as the four others still missing in wake of the freak boat accident.
Lynch, who has an estimated net worth of a $1 billion, struck it big when he sold his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. The technology was developed in 1996 as a means to comb through emails and other internal business documents to help companies find vital information more quickly. It also earned him one of the U.
K’s highest honors, the Office of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2006 While the pricey deal seemed set to cement Lynch as a fixture in Silicon Valley, it quickly crumbled over accusations that he cooked the books to make the sale happen. The allegations culminated in a decades-long legal battle that saw Lynch extradited to the Unit.