Owner of luxury yacht linked to Mike Lynch's wifepublished at 14:26 British Summer Time 19 August

14:26 BST 19 August

By Joshua Cheetham and Will Dahlgreen

BBC Verify has been looking at corporate records of the Bayesian and have found that the luxury yacht is tied to the wife of Mike Lynch, a British businessman who is reportedly among the missing.

According to Equasis, a maritime data service, the Bayesian is owned by Revtom, a firm registered in the Isle of Man.

The company's latest annual statement was filed in April with the Isle of Man’s Companies Registry. In the statement, Angela Bacares is named as the sole legal owner, with an address registered in London.

Bacares was among the 15 people rescued, a source tells the AFP news agency.

Image source, EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

A search and rescue operation is under way after a luxury yacht - the Bayesian - carrying several British citizens sank off the coast of Sicily at about 04:30 local time.

Here's what we know so far:

• One person has been confirmed dead and six people are still missing
• Emergency services rescued 15 people, including a one-year-old British girl
• The Italian Coastguard is leading the search, with divers and helicopters scouring the sea
• A wreck has been located at a depth of 50m (164ft) below the water's surface
• The captain of a boat nearby told reporters he rescued 15 people from a life raft
• He says the vessel was "heeling" (leaning over to the side) before it sank
• Camper & Nicholsons, managers of the Bayesian, confirmed to the BBC that the yacht sank after "severe weather"
• British entrepreneur Mike Lynch is among the missing people, Reuters and PA news agency report

As well as the British people on the yacht, it's been reported that those onboard were nationals of the US, Canada, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Ireland.

Image source, PA Media

British businessman Mike Lynch, who is reportedly missing after the luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily, made his fortune in the IT industry.

Lynch co-founded software company Autonomy in Cambridge in 1996, which expanded rapidly to become one of the UK's leading tech firms.

His company's success led it to be being sold to computing giant Hewlett-Packard for $11bn (£8.6bn) in 2011 - a deal in which Lynch made £500m ($647m).

But the acquisition soon unravelled, as questions were asked about the enormous price tag.

Just a year later, HP wrote down the value of Autonomy to $8.8bn, saying Lynch had exaggerated its value.

Years of legal battles followed, which culminated in US prosecutors bringing charges against Lynch in 2018.

Prosecutors accused him of inflating the value of the firm by using backdated agreements to mislead about the company's sales, said he had concealed the firm's loss-making business reselling hardware, and also accused him of intimidating or paying off people who raised concerns.

But he was eventually extradited to the US in 2022 to face trial - a process which culminated in June with his acquittal.

In an interview with the BBC earlier this month, Lynch said "the reason I'm sitting here, let's be honest, is not only because I was innocent... but because I had enough money not to be swept away by a process that's set up to sweep you away".

British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch is reportedly among the people missing after the luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily, sources have told Reuters and PA news agency.

The BBC has yet to independently confirm this.

We can now bring you some more details of how a British mother kept her infant child alive by holding her head above the water until rescuers arrived.

“I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning," she told reporters at la Repubblica, an Italian news outlet.

“It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.”

Corriere della Sera newspaper reports that the one-year-old girl hugged the firefighter who rescued her in the waves.

The British girl was later taken to hospital with her mother, who needed stitches in her chest for a minor injury.

Speaking to the newspaper, the head of the paediatric emergency room said both the girl and her mother are in "good condition" - adding that the hospital was carrying out tests on the child "only out of caution".

We can now bring you some more images of the Bayesian, the luxury yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily earlier this morning.

These pictures, taken in recent years, show the 56m (184ft) boat sailing in good conditions.

Image source, Ben Miller

Image source, Jeroen Nijpels

Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify

We’ve been looking at the yacht's travel history on MarineTraffic – a website that tracks vessels using their publicly-available onboard transponders.

The Bayesian, the luxury yacht that sank, was around 700m (2,296ft) from Porticello harbour when it last reported its location, which occurred at just after 03:00 BST.

It was built in 2008 and travel data from MarineTraffic shows that it spent the majority of its life in the western Mediterranean.

In the week before it sunk, the Bayesian had sailed around northern Sicily and the Aeolian Islands, a popular tourist destination.

We can't tell who was sailing onboard at the time from this tracking data. This information will be on a private manifest.

Camper & Nicholsons, managers of the Bayesian, have confirmed to the BBC that the yacht sank at around 04:30 local time after "severe weather".

The firm said there were a total of 12 guests and 10 crew onboard.

In a statement it added: "The Italian Coast Guard is leading search and rescue operations, and has safely recovered 15 individuals. Efforts to locate the seven missing persons continue.

"Our priority is assisting with the ongoing search and providing all necessary support to the rescued passengers and crew.

"More information will be provided as it becomes available."

As a reminder, at least one person has died and six people are still missing.

The captain of a nearby boat that rescued the 15 people has described the conditions in which the Bayesian sank last night.

Karsten Borner says his own vessel was battered by very strong gusts in the early hours of the morning, managing to stabilise it while anchored by using the engine.

He says as they were doing this, they noticed the Bayesian nearby and manoeuvred to avoid hitting it.

"We managed to keep the ship in position, and after the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone."

Borner says afterwards he and his first mate noticed a flare in the water, heading to smoke and light to find a life raft drifting in the sea.

He adds they found 15 people inside, including a baby. Four people were injured, three badly, Borner tells reporters.

Borner says they contacted the coastguard, who picked up the rescued and injured people.

Describing the conditions, the captain says his vessel was also "heeling" (leaning over to the side).

"There was a light and we saw that the ship was aside and then we saw a triangle."

As we've been reporting throughout the morning, many of the people who were on board the luxury yacht that sank off the coast of Porticello are British nationals.

It's unclear how many, but some of the six people who remain missing are Britons, Italian media has reported.

The UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has recently released this statement:

We're now getting some images of the rescue operation that's currently under way off the coast of Sicily, near Porticello in the north of the Italian island:

Image source, EPA

Image source, EPA

Image source, EPA

Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify

Image source, Fabio la Bianca

Italian authorities have confirmed the name of the vessel involved in this morning's sinking.

It’s a 56m luxury yacht called the Bayesian, flagged to the UK.

According to ship tracking website MarineTraffic, its publicly-available onboard tracker last transmitted near Porticello, just after 04:00 local time – shortly before the Italian coastguard said it sank.

The vessel was built in 2008 and was available for private charter - spending the majority of its life in the Mediterranean.

Its registered owner was a company based in the Isle of Man called Revtom Ltd, and it was managed by Camper and Nicholsons International.

A spokesperson for Camper and Nicholsons International told BBC Verify they are currently “dealing with a situation onboard one of [their] managed vessels”, but would not confirm which vessel, or any further details.

Matt Taylor
BBC Weather

The western half of the Mediterranean has seen frequent, severe storms since the middle part of last week, with low pressure dominating.

Through Sunday night and into Monday morning a clutch of intense storms passed by the north coast of Sicily.

These may have brought sudden increases in wind as well as heavy rain.

Without visual proof it is impossible to say whether there was a tornado in the area at the time of the incident.

The Sicilian emergency services have just released this video of the search and rescue operation currently under way, which includes footage of at least one helicopter scouring the sea's surface from the air.

With the wreck of the yacht at a depth of nearly 50m, scuba divers have been brought in to search for the six people who remain missing:

We don't have many details about who was on board the boat as of yet, but here's what we can say at the moment about the 22 people:

• One person has died and six more are missing from the yacht
• Ten of those on board were crew members, alongside 12 passengers
• The coast guard says four Britons, two Americans and one Canadian are missing
• Emergency services rescued the remaining 15 from the water, including a one-year-old child
• Eight of those rescued are being treated in hospital
• The person who died was found by a helicopter scouring the area

Image source, Reuters

As we just reported, earlier this morning a 56-metre-long luxury sailboat, the Bayesian, with 22 people on board, sank off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo.

Six people are still reported missing, while at least one person has died.

A further 15 passengers were rescued by coastguards.

One of the survivors is reportedly an English one-year-old girl who was taken to Palermo's paediatric hospital, local media reports. She is in a stable condition.

The passengers on board the British-flagged boat were mainly from the UK, as well as one citizen of New Zealand, one of Sri Lanka, one Irish national and two passengers with dual British-French citizenship.

Some of the people on board the vessel were reportedly Canadian and American nationals.

One man has died and six other people are missing after a sailing yacht sank off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of Monday morning, the Italian fire and rescue service has said.

Among the 22 people on board were several British citizens, as well as American and Canadian nationals.

The 56-metre-long luxury sailboat is reported to have sunk near Palermo, after a tornado hit the area. At least 15 have been rescued by coastguards.

This is a fast-moving situation and we are just starting to get a picture of what is happening. We'll keep you updated as more news comes in - so stick with us.

Image source, Reuters