Britain’s Bill Gates, his sunken superyacht, and the bitter fight for £700 million
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 10 November 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last year, tech billionaire Mike Lynch was given a second chance at life when he was acquitted of criminal fraud charges. But while celebrating with friends and family aboard his yacht, a freak storm arose. Lynch, his daughter, and five others were tragically killed. This week, deliberations begin over how much compensation his estate owes to the company he defrauded. Payments which could lead to bankruptcy.
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Guest: Katie Prescott, technology business editor, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Micaela Arneson.
Further listening: The tragedy of Mike Lynch and the sunken yacht
Clips: Danny in the Valley, BBC, LeadersIn, Black Thunder / YouTube, Charlie Rose.
Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manvine Rano. |
| 0:10.7 | For Mike Lynch, the mercurial billionaire and British tech titan, it was a moment of immense relief. After more than a year |
| 0:25.0 | of being under house arrest in California, while on trial for fraud, he was suddenly free. |
| 0:32.7 | I was extra. I had to say goodbye to everything and everyone, because I didn't know if I'd ever be coming back. |
| 0:38.1 | So now it's very strange. You have a new life. And that comes to the question, which is, |
| 0:41.5 | what do you want to do? But as he celebrated with friends and family aboard his yacht, |
| 0:47.4 | the Bayesian, just off the coast of Italy, the celebration abruptly turned into tragedy. |
| 0:55.9 | A search is continuing into the night for six people missing after a British luxury yacht sank in a freak storm off Sicily early this morning. |
| 1:05.4 | Among those still unaccounted for is the tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch. |
| 1:10.3 | It was a tragic twist of fate for a man who'd just been given a second chance at life. |
| 1:16.6 | Mike Lynch, along with his 18-year-old daughter and five others, died. |
| 1:22.6 | But for his widow, the drama is far from over. |
| 1:26.6 | This week, a court will decide whether to bankrupt his estate in order to pay damages to the company he defrauded. |
| 1:39.3 | The story today, the spectacular rise and tragic fall of Mike Lynch. |
| 1:51.0 | It's a big week for the Times journalist and host of the Times tech podcast, Katie Prescott. |
| 1:57.3 | Her first book, The Curious Case of Mike Lynch, is being published after years of |
| 2:03.6 | following the tech billionaires story. I was covering his criminal trial in California as tech |
| 2:10.1 | business editor for the times. And I needed to catch up with where we were because this is a story |
| 2:15.8 | that has gone on for, gosh, 15 years, more than that, |
| 2:20.1 | and I couldn't find anything. And yet here was someone who was known as Britain's Bill Gates, |
| 2:24.9 | who'd founded a tech company in the UK, which rose to join the Dizzy Heights of the Futsi 100, |
| 2:30.5 | which is incredibly rare, and then had sold his company to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion, |
... |
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