Who is Mike Lynch? The UK tech tycoon killed after his family superyacht sank in storm
British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch has been confirmed as one of those of who died on board the luxury Bayesian yacht after it sank off the coast of Sicily in a fierce storm.
The 56m-long vessel with 22 people on board went underwater near the Italian city of Palermo after being hit by a heavy storm in the early hours of Monday morning.
Lynch, 59, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, were among six people left missing in the aftermath, sparking a search from divers within the wreckage at a depth of 50m off the village of Porticello.
Once described as "Britain's Bill Gates", Lynch was recently acquitted of fraud and conspiracy charges in a US court over the sale of his company Autonomy to Hewlett Packard.
He built the UK's largest software firm, Autonomy, which was sold to HP in a multi-billion deal in 2011. But the deal spectacularly unravelled with the U.S. tech giant accusing him of fraud, resulting in a lengthy trial.
He was acquitted on all charges by a jury in San Francisco in June.
His family
Lynch leaves behind his wife, Angela Bacares, 57. The couple had two daughters - one of whom was Hannah - and lived at Loudham Hall estate in Pettistree, Suffolk.
Lynch's wife was rescued from the yacht. She said in the aftermath of the incident that she and her husband were awoken at 4am on Monday after the boat made a "slight tilt".
This year's Sunday Times Rich List valued Lynch and Bacares at £500m.
His influence
Lynch was awarded an OBE in 2006 for services to enterprise and in 2011, the year of the Autonomy sale to Hewlett-Packard, he was named as the most influential person in UK IT by Computer Weekly magazine.
Lynch served on the board of the BBC as a non-executive director.
The same year as the sale, he was appointed to the government's council for science and technology, advising then prime minister David Cameron on artificial intelligence.
His early life
Lynch was born in Ilford, Essex, in June 1965, to Irish parents and grew up in Chelmsford.
His mother was a nurse from Co Tipperary and his father a firefighter from Co Cork.
Lynch won a scholarship to the prestigious Bancroft's School, in Woodford, east London, and went on to study Natural Sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge.
Lynch developed an interest in artificial intelligence, going on to study for a PhD in neural networks (a form of machine learning) and later taking on a research fellowship in adaptive pattern recognition.
Early career and Autonomy
Lynch established his first company, Lynett Systems, in the late 1980s while still studying for his PhD.
It was financed with a £2,000 loan negotiated in a bar and made audio products for the music industry such as synthesisers and samplers.
He founded Cambridge Neurodynamics in 1991, which focused on fingerprint recognition, then set up business software company Autonomy in 1996.
Autonomy sale to Hewlett-Packard
Autonomy was bought by tech giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) in October 2011 for $11.7bn (£8.6bn), but within a year, HP had written off $8.8bn of Autonomy's value.
HP claimed this was as a result of "serious accounting improprieties" and "outright misrepresentations" from the previous management.
Lynch left his role as Autonomy chief executive in May 2012. After the sale, he founded venture capital firm Invoke Capital.
Fraud trial
In June this year, Lynch was acquitted of fraud and conspiracy charges he faced in the US over the sale of Autonomy.
A court in San Francisco found him not guilty on all counts, after he was accused of inflating the value of the company before its sale.
Lynch was extradited to the US last year and faced more than 20 years in an American prison had he been convicted.
He spent 13 months under house arrest ahead of the 11-week trial, in which he took the stand, denying any wrongdoing and blaming HP for botching the integration of the two companies.
In July, he told The Times newspaper in his first interview after being cleared that he thought he would die in jail.
“I’d had to say goodbye to everything and everyone, because I didn’t know if I’d ever be coming back," he said. “I have various medical things that would have made it difficult to survive.”
He reportedly told the paper that, if convicted, he was unlikely to live to see freedom because of his age and serious lung condition.
At the beginning of this month, Lynch told BBC Radio 4's PM programme that he was only able to clear his name because of his wealth.
"You shouldn't need to have funds to protect yourself as a British citizen," he said.
"The reason I'm sitting here, let's be honest, is not only because I was innocent... but because I had enough money not to be swept away by a process that's set up to sweep you away."
The death of his co-defendant
In a bizarre coincidence, Lynch's co-defendant in his US fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, 52, died after he was hit by a car on the Saturday before the Bayesian sank.
Chamberlain, the former vice-president of Autonomy, was struck by the vehicle while out running in Stretham, Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning.
In a tribute, Chamberlain's family said he was a “much-loved husband, father, son, brother and friend”.
They said in a statement: “He was an amazing individual whose only goal in life was to help others in any way possible.
“He made a lasting impression on everyone who had the privilege of knowing him. He will be deeply missed but forever in the hearts of his loved ones.”
Cambridgeshire Police said Chamberlain was hit by a blue Vauxhall Corsa car on the A1123 Newmarket Road at about 10.10am on Saturday.
The driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman, remained at the scene and is assisting with police inquiries.
