Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo are among the six people missing after a luxury yacht sank in a storm off Sicily on Monday, Sicily’s Civil Protection told the BBC.
UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18, were earlier also reported unaccounted for after the incident about 700m (2,300ft) from the Mediterranean island’s shore.
The 56m Bayesian was carrying 22 people including Brits, Americans and Canadians. Fifteen people were rescued, including a one-year-old British girl. Sicily’s Civil Protection also confirmed that the body of the ship’s cook was recovered.
The yacht capsized at about 5:00 local time after a heavy storm caused waterspouts, or rotating columns of air.
A search operation was due to recommence at 06:30 local time (05:30 BST) on Tuesday, Italian newspaper La Reppublica reported.
The British-flagged yacht with 10 crew and 12 passengers sank near the port of Porticello, just east of Sicily’s capital Palermo, on Monday.
Witnesses told Italian news agency Ansa that the Bayesian’s anchor was down when the storm struck, causing the mast to break and the ship to lose its balance and sink.
The wreckage lies on the seabed at a depth of 50m, and divers are preparing to resume their search for the missing.
Mike Lynch, one of the missing passengers, is known by some as “the British Bill Gates”.
He co-founded software company Autonomy, before selling it to American computing giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011 for $11bn (£8.6bn).
But an intense legal battle following the high-profile acquisition loomed over Mr Lynch for over a decade. He was acquitted in the US in June on multiple fraud charges, for which he had been facing two decades in jail.
The sinking of the yacht came on the same day that Mr Lynch’s co-defendant in the fraud case, Stephen Chamberlain, was confirmed by his lawyer as having died after being hit by a car in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.
Source: BBC
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