Hiscox chairman among missing in yacht sinking

Hiscox chairman Jonathan Bloomer is among the six people missing after after the luxury yacht Bayesian sank in a storm off Sicily early on Monday morning, the BBC has reported. 

UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18, were earlier also reported unaccounted for after the incident about 700 metres from the Mediterranean island's shore. Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvollo is also among the missing. 

Bloomer, reportedly a close friend of Lynch, is also chairman of Morgan Stanley International and was CEO of Prudential Plc. 

The 56-metre Bayesian was carrying 22 people including Britons, 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.

A search operation resumed early on Tuesday morning, according to Italian media.

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.

The yacht capsized at about 5am local time after a heavy storm caused waterspouts, or rotating columns of air and mist, the BBC said. 

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.

On Monday, specialist fire and rescue divers, trained to work in tight spaces, flew in from Rome and Sardinia, but a first search of the wreck some 50 metres below the sea surface failed.

"Access was limited only to the bridge, with difficulty due to the presence of furniture obstructing passage," the Italian fire department posted on social media.

Bloomer, 70, became chairman of Bermuda-based Hiscox in 2023, succeeding Robert Childs. He was a partner at Arthur Andersen before joining Prudential as chief financial officer, where he later became CEO. He stepped down in 2012 and has since been a director and chairman of a number of companies, primarily in financial services.

Hiscox have not yet made a statement on Bloomer.   

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.

There are reports that Lynch had invited members of his legal team onto the yacht to celebrate his acquittal.

The sinking of the yacht came on the same day that 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.

Morvillo has worked on high profile corruption cases, including Mr Lynch's recent trial.

He also worked on the criminal investigation surrounding the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, as an assistant US attorney for the southern district of New York from 1999 to 2005.

The Bayesian's registered owner is listed as Revtom Ltd. The superyacht can accommodate up to 12 guests in six suites.

The yacht's name is understood to be based on the Bayesian theory, which Lynch's PhD thesis was based on.

Lynch's wife Angela Bacares is named as the sole legal owner of Revtom, which is registered in the Isle of Man. Bacares was one of the 15 people rescued.

A British mother and her one-year-old daughter also survived.

The mother, named locally as Charlotte Golunski, later described how she was holding her baby above the surface of the sea to save her from drowning.

She told Italian newspaper La Repubblica her family survived because they were on deck when the yacht sank.

She said they were woken by “thunder, lightning and waves that made our boat dance”, and it felt like "the end of the world" before they were thrown into the water.

“For two seconds I lost my daughter in the sea then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves,” the paper quoted her as saying.

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