The ocean spares nobody.
The Bottom of Everything
The search for missing British billionaire Mike Lynch has come to an end after officials recovered his body from the Bayesian, his wife’s superyacht that sank off the coast of Sicily earlier this week.
As the Washington Post reports, the body of the late 59-year-old tycoon, who became a tech billionaire when selling his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett Packard in 2011, has been recovered from his wife’s 183-foot-long luxury yacht that was struck by a waterspout — a water-bound tornado, essentially — on Monday.
The only other person whose whereabouts are still unknown in the wake of the disaster is Hannah, Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter. The billionaire’s wife, Angela Bacares, and several others were rescued thanks to the help of another nearby yacht that avoided the waterspout.
Prior to Italian rescue officials’ confirmation that the software entrepreneur’s body was among those that had been recovered from the Bayesian, reports indicated that four of the other six people who’d been missing following the sinkage had been found dead. As WaPo notes, their numbers included Lynch’s attorney Chris Morvillo and his jeweler wife Neda, along with Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, charity trustee Judy Bloomer.
Strange Tidings
Bizarrely, the accident that led to the billionaire’s untimely demise occurred the same day that his former colleague and codefendant Stephen Chamberlain died from his own tragic accident. The one-time finance executive at Autonomy was struck by a car when going for a run in Cambridgeshire, England over the weekend, and died the same day the Bayesian sank.
To make matters even stranger, the pair had also just been acquitted on 11 counts of fraud in the United States that stemmed from the Autonomy sale 13 years prior.
Lynch’s right-hand man and Autonomy’s former chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, did not get off as easy after being convicted of similar fraud charges in the US and sanctioned by the UK government — but then again, he’s still alive.
In an interview with The Telegraph, e-commerce entrepreneur and Lynch friend Brent Hoberman likened the billionaire’s death to Shakespeare.
“He had just worked hard to clear his name for the last 12 years,” Hoberman told the British newspaper, “and was on a celebratory cruise with the people who supported him so much through that really tough time.”
More on maritime nightmares: Man Rowing Across Ocean Suddenly Realizes He’s Surrounded by Over 1,000 Whales
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