Mike Lynch net worth plummeted before billionaire went missing on when yacht capsized

British tech billionaire Mike Lynch has gone missing after his yacht capsized in a storm off the coast in Sicily.

The business mogul - once dubbed as the British Bill Gates - has not been found after the vessel Bayesian sank leaving one dead and six others missing. The yacht is believed to belong to Lynch's family. His wife, Angela Bacares, 57, is confirmed as being rescued from the horror sinking.

Dr Lynch was once hailed as the UK's first tech billionaire with the Ilford-born serial entrepreneur even making it onto Forbes rich list back in 2015. However, Lynch - whose father was a firefighter from County Cork and mother a nurse from County Tipperary - saw his finances take a few blows in recent years thanks to a very high-profile court case.

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The most recent estimation of his monetary value came in 2023 when the Sunday Times rich list valued him and his wife at $1.1bn. The news of his disappearance comes just weeks after he was cleared by a US jury of all charges in his high-profile fraud case relating to the sale of his business Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

The costly legal action had a big impact on his finances with him accused of conspiracy and attempted fraud over the at $11 billion sale to HP. The sale was the biggest tech takeover of a FTSE 100 company at the time.

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However, within a year HP had dropped $7.1bn of Autonomy's value claiming revenue streams were inflated. Both politicians and business leaders protested Lynch's extradition to the US to face the charges. They believed that as Autonomy was a UK-listed, UK-regulated and UK-audited company the hearing should have been heard in the UK.

Lynch co-founded cyber-security business Darktrace which was also a FTSE 100 company. However, his connection to the company dropped its share price due to his HP case and made it vulnerable to a US private equity company takeover.

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In April when US private equity firm Thoma Bravo agreed to a $5.4bn takeover of Darktrace.

Lynch also runs Invoke Capital, a $1 billion venture capital firm. He has a doctorate from Cambridge University and currently lives in Suffolk County in the United Kingdom.