The Italian Sea Group has filed a €456 million civil claim in a Sicilian court over the sinking of Bayesian, according to The Telegraph. The claim has been lodged in Termini Imerese, naming the 73-metre Perini Navi’s captain, two crew members and the yacht’s registered owner, Revtom, as defendants.

The builder alleges that crew negligence and operational failures contributed to the yacht capsizing during an abnormally fierce storm off the coast of Sicily on 19 August 2024.

According to the report, TISG argues that Bayesian was structurally sound and that the loss resulted from failures to secure hatches, respond to weather warnings and deploy the vessel’s keel. The company maintains that these actions, rather than any design fault, were responsible for the sinking.

A source close to the Lynch family told The Telegraph that the claim is as cynical as it is predictable.

“The UK investigation has raised serious, unresolved questions about the yacht’s design, stability and operating characteristics, including vulnerabilities unknown to the owner and crew. This action appears designed to distract from those issues, but it will not prevent proper scrutiny of how the vessel was designed, approved and built. It is desperate, opportunistic and in bad faith.”

TISG further alleges that the incident has had a severe commercial impact, including substantial revenue and profit losses, a decline in its share price and a complete collapse in demand for Perini Navi, which it acquired in late 2021 out of bankruptcy for €80 million.

But while TISG shares have indeed experienced volatility and a deep decline since the tragedy, the trading pattern does not show a clear single-step change that can be confidently attributed to it, rather than to broader market and stock-specific factors. The shares actually pulled back in late August 2024 after a mid-month peak.

The sharpest phase of the decline came between February and March 2025, when the shares fell from about €8.18 to €5.36 - a drop of roughly 35 per cent - during a wider risk-off phase in global markets amid President Trump-induced trade and tariff-related concerns. Listed national peers were also hit over the same period, with Ferretti Group falling about 23 per cent and Sanlorenzo down roughly 25 per cent, indicating that the move was sector-wide, albeit more acute for TISG.

Both Italian counterparts have since recovered. Sanlorenzo, though more volatile, is trading about 25 per cent above its March 2025 low and Ferretti has just traded at a post-listing high at the time of writing. By contrast, TISG shares have fallen a further 12 per cent from their March 2025 level.

That said, TISG continues to argue that sinking inflicted material commercial and reputational damage and is pressing ahead with its civil claim, which remains contested and under investigation. In fact, the company has said that sales of Perini Navi-branded yachts have fallen to zero since the accident.

It’s well worth bearing in mind that these claims sit alongside the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch’s (MAIB) interim report, published on 15 May last year, which found that, under the assumed-loss condition, the yacht had stability vulnerabilities that were not identified in the vessel’s stability information and were therefore unknown to both the owners and crew.

The report concludes that wind speeds capable of knocking the yacht beyond its angle of vanishing stability may have been lower than previously understood, although it stopped short of assigning fault. Authorities are still investigating the incident, with the full report expected to come later this year.

Of course, the tragedy and its worldwide visibility would reasonably be expected to have weighed on demand for Perini Navi yachts, particularly in the short term. But in stock-market terms, neither the timing of the sinking nor the publication of the MAIB’s interim report directly coincided with the sharpest phase of the share-price plummet, which was seen during a tariff-driven global sell-off. 

Click here to become part of The Superyacht Group community, and join us in our mission to make this industry accessible to all, and prosperous for the long-term. We are offering access to the superyacht industry’s most comprehensive and longstanding archive of business-critical information, as well as a comprehensive, real-time superyacht fleet database, for just £10 per month, because we are One Industry with One Mission. Sign up here.