A British yacht carrying high-profile passengers, including Morgan Stanley International Bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo, and British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, sank in bad weather off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of Monday.
The 56m (183ft) vessel was carrying 22 people including British, American and Canadian nationals. Fifteen people were rescued, including a one-year-old British girl, but six remain missing, including Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.
A man’s body has been recovered, though it has not yet been formally identified, with the Palermo coastguard stating it was the ship’s cook. Authorities are continuing their search into the night.
The yacht, reportedly hosting guests following Lynch’s recent acquittal in a major US legal case, had several legal professionals onboard, including Chris Morvillo, a partner at Clifford Chance. The father of one of the survivors, Ayla Reynold, a lawyer involved in Lynch’s case, confirmed that she and her partner were among the rescued.
Tragically, it was also revealed that Stephen Chamberlain, Lynch’s co-defendant in the long-running legal battle involving the sale of Autonomy, the software firm Lynch co-founded, died in a road accident on Saturday. Chamberlain, a former vice president of finance at Autonomy, had been struck by a car while out for a run in Cambridgeshire.
The sale of Autonomy to American computing giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $11 billion in 2011 had led to accusations of fraud against Lynch and Chamberlain. Lynch was acquitted of these charges in June, and the yacht outing was organized in the wake of this legal victory. The search for the missing passengers continues, with rescuers facing challenges as access to the yacht’s cabins has been blocked by furniture displaced during the sinking.
