An Italian official said that Morgan Stanley chairman Jonathan Bloomer is among those missing after a yacht carrying British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch sank off the coast of Sicily during a violent storm.
The head of Sicily’s civil protection agency said Bloomer and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance, were among the six people missing.
Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were also unaccounted for late Monday.
The 56-metre (185-foot) British-flagged sailing vessel the "Baysian", was carrying 22 people and anchored off the coast near the port of Porticello when it was hit by a hurricane in the early hours of Monday morning, the Italian coast guard said in an earlier statement.
A man, believed to be the ship’s chief chef, has been confirmed dead. The coastguard said the missing were British, American and Canadian nationals.
Up to 15 people were rescued, including Lynch’s wife Angela Bakaris, who owned the ship, and a one-year-old girl rescued by her mother.
Lynch, once described as Britain’s Bill Gates, has spent much of the past decade in court defending his name against fraud allegations related to the $11bn sale of his software company, Autonomy, to US technology company Hewlett-Packard.
Rescue divers were trying to reach the hull of the Baysian on Monday, which was carrying 10 crew and 12 passengers, the Italian coast guard said.
The boat sank to a depth of about 49 metres (150 feet), and the prosecutor's office in Termini Imerese is investigating the incident.
"The wind was very strong. The weather was expected to be bad, but not this bad," a coast guard official in the Sicilian capital Palermo told Reuters.
A nearby boat captain told Reuters that when the wind picked up, he turned on the engine to control his vessel and avoid hitting the Baysian, which was moored alongside.
"We managed to keep the ship in place and after the storm passed we noticed that the ship behind us had disappeared," Carsten Borner told reporters. The other boat "capsized and sank," he said.
He said his crew then found some survivors on a lifeboat - including a baby girl and her mother - and took them aboard the yacht before they were picked up by the coastguard.
Eight of those rescued, including the one-year-old girl, were taken to hospital and were all in a stable condition.
Chief medical officer at the Di Cristina Hospital in Palermo said: "The baby is fine. The mother is also doing well, albeit with some minor scratches. The father will be released from hospital soon.
They said most of them were colleagues who worked with Lynch. They are deeply shocked. As time goes by, they are increasingly aware that they have lost many friends this morning."
The New Zealand Foreign Ministry confirmed that two New Zealanders were on the yacht.
New Zealand lawyer Ayla Ronald was named as one of the survivors. Her father, Lynn Ronald, confirmed to the Guardian that his daughter was fine but was in shock after the incident.
Hours after news of the ship’s sinking broke, it emerged that his co-defendant in that trial, Stephen Chamberlain, had died after being hit by a car while jogging in Cambridgeshire.
Chamberlain, former vice president of finance at Autonomy, was hit by a car on Saturday morning and was put on life support, Reuters reported. Chamberlain's lawyer, Gary Linsenberg, said in a statement that he died after being "hit by a deadly vehicle" while jogging.
Rescue personnel operate on boats August 20 near where a luxury yacht sank off the coast of Porticello, near the Sicilian city of Palermo. — Reuters
Rescue personnel operate on boats August 20 near where a luxury yacht sank off the coast of Porticello, near the Sicilian city of Palermo. — Reuters
Rescue personnel operate on boats August 20 near where a luxury yacht sank off the coast of Porticello, near the Sicilian city of Palermo. — Reuters
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