Tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch was on board when a luxury yacht sank near Palermo, but has yet to be found. The Briton rose to fame thanks to a billion-dollar deal with HP, which turned into a debacle for the Americans.

British technology pioneer Mike Lynch was on board the yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily. The sunken “Bayesian” is even said to belong to him, reports the Telegraph. His wife was one of those rescued. According to Italian media, one person has died and several passengers are still missing, including the businessman.

According to the Italian coast guard, the ship was anchored off the coast of the island when it was caught in a strong storm and sank. The wreck lies at a depth of about 50 metres. There, divers are searching for the missing people. It is feared that they may have been locked in their cabins. 15 of the 22 people on board were rescued.

The 59-year-old entrepreneur has been hailed as Britain's Bill Gates and scored an unexpected victory in a lawsuit in the summer against the backdrop of Lynch's sale of his Autonomy business to Hewlett Packard in 2011 for $11 billion.

HP celebrated its acquisition of business software company Autonomy as a huge success, but the deal turned into a debacle. A year after the acquisition, Meg Whitman, then HP’s chief executive, accused Lynch and other Autonomy executives of inflating their company’s sales in the years leading up to the acquisition. HP had to write down billions of dollars and fired Lynch, who remained head of Autonomy. Lynch was also accused of being ultimately responsible for HP’s subsequent decline. He himself always maintained that he had done nothing wrong.

HP sued the businessman. After years of legal wrangling, the Briton was extradited to the United States and tried for accounting fraud. But last June, Lynch was acquitted by a jury. This was surprising, since the Autonomy CFO had previously been found guilty by another jury and sentenced by the court to five years in prison.

But Lynch's legal troubles did not end with her acquittal in the United States. About two years ago, HP largely won a civil suit against Lynch in London. The company wants $4 billion in damages. But it has not yet been decided how much money HP is actually entitled to. Lynch had also announced that she would defend herself against the London verdict.