Mike Lynch considered selling doomed superyacht before trip

British tech tycoon put £30m boat up for sale in March, but withdrew it from the market shortly after his acquittal

Mike Lynch considered selling his doomed superyacht before his trip to the Mediterranean but changed his mind after his acquittal, The Telegraph can reveal.
The British tech tycoon, 59, had put his £30 million luxury superyacht Bayesian yacht up for sale in March but withdrew it from the market in July, shortly after being acquitted of fraud in San Francisco.
He planned to spend the summer on board the 184ft vessel and then review the decision to sell in the autumn, industry sources told The Telegraph.
Mr Lynch, described as Britain’s Bill Gates, was found not guilty on all counts of inflating the value of Autonomy, the company he sold to the Hewlett-Packard, the US tech giant, for £8.6 billion in 2011.
In a rare interview following his acquittal, Mr Lynch, who spent 13 months in the US under house arrest after being extradited from the UK last May, told The Times: “Now you have a second life. The question is, what do you want to do with it?”
Guests had been invited on board to celebrate his court victory, including at least one member of his legal team from Clifford Chance, the City law firm, as well as colleagues at the London investment fund Invoke Capital, which he ran.
Mr Lynch’s body is believed to be among those recovered from the sunken vessel after divers broke through a three-centimetre pane of glass to gain access to the boat, which lies intact on its starboard side 165ft under water. His wife, Angela Bacares, 57, survived.
On Wednesday, Italian authorities said they believed the body of his 18-year-old daughter Hannah was among those found. But on Thursday morning a source close to the rescue operation suggested she may not yet have been found.
Others on board included Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of the Morgan Stanley International bank, and his wife Judy, and Chris Morvillo, the Clifford Chance lawyer, and his wife Neda.
The Bayesian, previously called Salute, was built in 2008 by Perini Navi, an Italian shipyard, alongside yacht designer Ron Holland Design.
Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation into the disaster and will seek to establish what caused the boat to sink and whether any of the crew are criminally liable.
They are expected to investigate the keel on Mike Lynch’s superyacht after it was found “partially elevated”, and also examine whether the yacht’s crew had failed to close access hatches into the vessel before it was hit by a tornado.
Giovanni Costantino, founder and chief executive of The Italian Sea Group, which owns the Perini Navi shipyard that built the superyacht, has defended the boat’s construction and blamed human error for the sinking of the vessel. He claimed the Bayesian was “one of the safest boats in the world” and was virtually “unsinkable”.
Mr Costantino told Corriere della Sera, the Italian newspaper: “The passengers reported something absurd, that the storm came unexpectedly, suddenly. That is not true. Everything was predictable.
“Ask yourself – why were none of the Porticello fishermen out that night? A fisherman checks the conditions and a ship doesn’t? The disturbance was completely readable on all the weather maps. It was impossible not to know.
“A Perini vessel survived Hurricane Katrina. You don’t think it could survive a tornado like this?”
When divers searched the Bayesian 165ft underwater, it was reported that they found the vessel’s retractable keel was partially raised, sparking questions about the boat’s stability at the time of the sinking.
The fin-like structure under the hull helped to stabilise the yacht – acting as a counterweight to the mast – and stretched to 9.83 metres when the vessel’s centreboard was fully extended, according to a brochure about its performance. Experts have suggested the keel would normally be fully extended for extra stability during bad weather.
It has also been reported that the space housing the boat’s tender was not fully closed when it went down.