Lynch’s body was among those retrieved from the yacht, multiple media outlets reported Thursday morning.
The 183-foot vessel, the Baysian, had 22 passengers and crew on board, most of whom survived.
But those missing also include Lynch and his daughter, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morbillo and his wife, Neda, and Morgan Stanley international chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy.
Divers had pulled five bodies from the wreck by early Thursday morning, the BBC reported, with a sixth body said to be inside the vessel.
Fifteen people were rescued, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacalez.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, is missing, according to Sky News.
Italian firefighters search for victims at a dive site close to where the ship sank. Jonathan Brady – PA Images/Getty Images
Italian authorities are investigating the exact cause of the sinking.
Lynch’s family had yet to issue an official statement as of Thursday. Lynch’s friend, British entrepreneur Brent Hoberman, told Sky News that Lynch’s death was “incredibly tragic.”
“We were all hoping for a miracle, and we knew it was unlikely, but we still held on to hope,” Hoberman said.
He called Lynch an “inspiring figure” in the technology world and said his work should be remembered.
Lynch, 59, is a former British government adviser who founded British software company Autonomy in 1996. By 2011 the company had become so successful that Hewlett-Packard agreed to buy it for $11 billion.
However, in 2012, HP claimed that $5 billion of the acquisition price was the result of “accounting irregularities” and that HP had significantly overpaid.
A decade-long legal battle culminated last year when Lynch was extradited to the United States to face charges of fraud and falsely inflating the value of his companies.
In June of this year, a San Francisco jury acquitted Lynch, who had maintained his innocence from the start.
Mike Lynch walks into a federal courthouse in San Francisco in March 2024. Michael Liedtke/AP Images
“It’s incredibly tragic for him that he wasn’t able to live a full, honourable life for the last 12 years and it’s obviously very sad that we now have confirmation of his death,” Hoberman told Sky News.
Sunday Times reporter Danny Fortson was the first person to interview Lynch after his acquittal, for a story published in late July.
Fortson told Business Insider that Lynch had spent more than a decade worrying about going to prison, but was excited about the chance to get a second chance at life.
“He seemed like someone who was really upset about the situation he was in,” Fortson told BI. “I think he was still in a bit of shock because he’d been struggling with this for so long and the consequences were significant if he lost. I think he was really at a bit of a loss, wrestling with his emotions about what to do and how he should feel.”
“I think his first attempt was to do nothing and try to make up for lost time,” Fortson added, “and I think that, very sadly, was the purpose of this voyage.”
Two days before the accident, on Saturday, Lynch’s co-defendant in a US fraud case, Stephen Chamberlain, was hit by a car and killed while jogging.
“What’s happened with him and Chamberlain over the past few days has the feel of a Greek tragedy,” Richard Holway MBE, an IT analyst and friend of Mr Lynch, told BI.
Holway also reflected on Lynch’s accomplishments as a business owner and entrepreneur.
“People say he was difficult to work with, but I think people liked people who were tough and made sure things got done, and I think Lynch was one of those people,” Holway said, adding that Lynch liked loyalty and always demonstrated it.
Another friend of Lynch’s, Common Current CEO Warren Karlenzingh, who knew Lynch in the ’90s, told Business Insider that Lynch would often come over from the UK and enjoy spending time in Karlenzingh’s office.
“He just wants to chat about Bayesian logic and Thomas Bayes, on which Autonomy is based,” Karlenzingh said, adding that Bayes, Lynch’s hero, also died at the age of 59.
“The HP acquisition and the controversy that came with it made me wonder, ‘Is that the same guy?’ Because he looked completely different from this long-haired, beard-wearing, super-energetic, eccentric guy,” Karlenzingh said of Lynch.
Karlenzingh added that people in Silicon Valley are “shocked that this tragedy happened, and that all this wealth cannot buy safety.”
A few weeks after her acquittal, Lynch told Fortson she had grown more spiritually and was thinking about “St. Peter’s questions” about heaven and hell and what they mean.
“I had to say goodbye to everything and everyone because I might never come back,” Lynch told The Sunday Times’ Fortson. “If this had gone the wrong way, life as I knew it would have ended in every sense.”
