Who is Mike Lynch, the billionaire missing in the Bayesian yacht sinking?

Six people, including American, Canadian and British citizens, are missing after the Bayesian, a luxury yacht, capsized and sank off the coast of the Italian island of Sicily in the early hours of Monday morning. Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, nicknamed ‘the British Bill Gates’  by some, is one of the six individuals whose whereabouts are unknown.

What happened to the Bayesian?

Speaking to Italian news agency Ansa, witnesses said the Bayesian’s anchor was down when a storm struck at around 5am local time (11pm ET on Sunday), causing the mast to break and the ship to lose its balance.

15 people who were on board the vessel have been rescued, with the body of one other man found outside the wreckage. Survivors said Lynch, who is valued at $648 million according to the Sunday Times Rich List, had organised the trip for family, friends and work colleagues. Two months ago, he was acquitted in the United States on multiple fraud charges, for which he could have spent 20 years in prison.

Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares was one of those rescued, but their 18-year-old daughter Hannah is among the people missing. A wreckage around 50 metres below sea level has been identified, with divers continuing their search to find those still unaccounted for.

Who is Mike Lynch? How did he make his fortune?

Born in Ireland to a fireman and a nurse, Lynch grew up in England, where he studied physics, mathematics and biochemistry at Cambridge University.

By the age of 26, he had already founded two companies, the first, Lynett Systems, related to designs and audio products for the music industry, and the second, Cambridge Neurodynamics, which focused on computer-based fingerprint recognition.

However, his third business, Autonomy Corporation, was his most successful financially. Founded in 1996, the tech firm’s software allowed companies to analyse significant caches of data and it soon became one of the UK’s top-listed companies.

Other personal success followed in subsequent years, with Lynch becoming a non-executive director on the BBC’s board and then science advisor to then British Prime Minister David Cameron.

In 2011, he sold Autonomy to Hewlett Packard for $11 billion, using some of the money to set up tech investment firm Invoke Capital.

However, his sale of Autonomy caused controversy, with HP claiming it had discovered “serious accounting improprieties” after their acquisition, which led to US prosecutors brining fraud charges against Lynch in 2018, of which he was recently acquitted after a lengthy legal battle.