The Italian Sea Group has launched a £400 million lawsuit against Angela Bacares, the widow of British tech billionaire Mike Lynch, over the sinking of the superyacht Bayesian, in a legal battle that has stunned the yachting world.
The Italian Sea Group, which builds superyachts under the Perini Navi brand, filed the claim in the Sicilian town of Termini Imerese, seeking €456 million, roughly £399 million, in damages. Court papers name Bacares in her capacity as the legal owner of Revtom, the Isle of Man-registered company that owned the £30 million vessel, alongside the yacht's skipper James Cutfield and two crew members, Timothy Eaton and Matthew Griffiths.
The company alleges that crew negligence and incompetence caused the 184-foot yacht to capsize during a violent storm off the coast of Sicily on August 19, 2024, in which Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah and five others died. Bacares survived the sinking. The shipbuilder claims the crew failed to heed weather warnings, lower the keel and secure hatches as conditions worsened, and maintains the yacht was marketed as unsinkable.
The Italian Sea Group argues the disaster destroyed its business. It claims the collapse of planned yacht orders worth close to £1 billion, a complete halt in sales of Perini-branded yachts, lost profits, a decline in share value and missed opportunities, including a fashion brand that withdrew plans to work with the company. The firm says it has been unjustly blamed for a catastrophe caused by human error rather than any design flaw.
A source close to the Lynch family rejected the allegations, telling The Telegraph the claim was cynical and pointing to serious unresolved questions raised by the UK investigation into the sinking about the yacht's design, stability and operating characteristics. The source suggested potential vulnerabilities may have been unknown to the owner and crew.
The lawsuit adds to the immense pressures on Bacares. In a separate ruling, the UK High Court found that Lynch's estate owes more than £700 million to Hewlett-Packard over fraud claims relating to the acquisition of his software company Autonomy, a liability that now hangs over the estate.
The case raises profound questions about accountability in the luxury yacht industry and about the spectacle of a shipbuilder suing a bereaved widow. With criminal investigations into the crew continuing in Italy, the civil battle in Sicily is set to run for years, keeping one of the most tragic maritime disasters of recent times firmly in the headlines.