Divers Find Body Of Missing British Tech Billionaire

NBC News reports:

The body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch was recovered from the wreck of a superyacht that sank off the coast of Sicily, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC Thursday.

Rescuers were still searching for Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah, the source said, the last person missing from the luxury boat that went down in what authorities said was a freak storm early Monday.

A massive search effort was launched, and four bodies were recovered from the 180-foot Bayesian on Wednesday after an operation hampered by the depth to which the wreck had sunk and the debris that blocked divers’ path through its narrow passages.

CBS News reports:

Lynch, 59, rose to prominence in the late 1990s with the development of his software company, Autonomy, which helped businesses quickly find information buried in email and other digital documents. In 2011, Lynch sold the business to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion, giving him a $800 million payday and cementing him as one of the U.K.’s richest people.

But the acquisition was later called one of the “most notorious failed mergers and acquisitions” after HP discovered alleged accounting issues, leading to Lynch’s firing by HP’s then-CEO, Meg Whitman.

HP claimed that Autonomy had used accounting improprieties to bolster its underlying financials ahead of the acquisition, charges that Lynch steadfastly denied. The case stretched into a 12-year legal fight that ended in June 2024 when a federal court jury in San Francisco delivered not-guilty verdicts.

This morning Fortune is noting that Lynch spent “many of his final months under house arrest.”

Mike Lynch yacht latest: Body of British tech entrepreneur retrieved by Italian coastguard, reports say https://t.co/4d9RMCE4CY

— The Guardian (@guardian) August 22, 2024