New York
CNN
—
Mike Lynch, the 59-year-old British tech investor, is amongst these lacking after a twister hit a luxurious yacht he was on, sinking it off the coast of Sicily, Italy, early Monday, a supply instructed CNN.
Lynch garnered a lot of his wealth from cofounding Autonomy, a tech firm bought by Hewlett-Packard, or HP, for $11 billion in 2011. An lawyer for Lynch just lately revealed that the entrepreneur’s whole price is round $450 million.
The Autonomy sale was one of many largest British tech offers on the time however shortly went bitter, with HP writing down Autonomy’s worth by $8.8 billion inside a 12 months. The Autonomy acquisition was meant to gas HP’s software program enterprise. As a substitute, the blockbuster sale has been slowed down by authorized issues that just lately culminated with a fraud trial.
Prosecutors accused Lynch and former Autonomy finance government Stephen Chamberlain of scheming to inflate Autonomy’s income earlier than promoting to HP. In June, Lynch was acquitted on 15 fees — one rely of conspiracy and 14 counts of wire fraud — in a San Francisco courtroom.
The decision got here as a shock to Lynch. “While you hear that reply, you bounce universes. If this had gone the incorrect means, it could have been the top of life as I’ve identified it in any sense,” he instructed the Occasions, a UK newspaper.
Autonomy, based in 1996, turned Britain’s largest software program firm and a member of the blue-chip FTSE 100 index. Lynch was lauded on the time by teachers and scientists and was requested to advise the British authorities on expertise and innovation.
The vessel Lynch was on, the Bayesian, is linked to his spouse, Angela Bacares, who was amongst these rescued. Possession information held by maritime data service Equasis present that the 56-meter yacht is owned by the Isle of Man-registered Revtom Restricted, an organization owned by his spouse.
Fifteen others had been rescued from the scene. One baby was airlifted to the kids’s hospital in Palermo, and eight folks had been hospitalized in whole, in response to the mayor’s workplace. One physique was discovered on the hull of the yacht, the Coast Guard stated.
–Reuters and CNN’s Barbie Latza Nadeau contributed to this report.