Morgan Stanley’s Mike Lynch and Jonathan Plumer missing after luxury yacht sinks off Sicily

London
CNN
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British tech mogul Mike Lynch, Morgan Stanley international director Jonathan Plummer and prominent US lawyer Chris Morvillo are among six people still missing after a hurricane hit a luxury yacht off the coast of Sicily.

The ship sank on Monday — killing one of the 22 people on board — after its mast, one of the world’s tallest, snapped in half during a storm. Fifteen people were rescued.

The head of the Italian island’s civil protection agency, Salvatore Cosina, told reporters at the scene that Blumer and Morvillo’s wives were also missing.

Blumer is the non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley International, and is also chairman of London-listed insurance company Hiscox.

“We are deeply shocked and saddened by this tragedy. Our thoughts are with everyone affected, especially the Blumer family, as we all await further news about this terrible situation,” according to a statement from Morgan Stanley. The spokesman told CNN,.

Hiscox CEO Aki Husain said in a statement Tuesday that the company was “shocked and deeply saddened” by the “tragic” news.

“Our thoughts are with all those affected, especially our President Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy, who are among those missing, and their families as they await more news about this terrible situation,” he added.

Italian firefighters will try again to enter the sunken ship on Tuesday to search for the missing after a failed attempt on Monday, the Italian coast guard said on Sunday.

The yacht was hit by the storm at around 5 a.m. local time on Monday, an Italian coast guard spokesman said. The yacht was anchored about half a mile from the port of Porticello on the Mediterranean island.

Powerful storms battered Sicily late Sunday, dumping more than 4 inches (100 mm) of rain in less than four hours in Brolo, east of Palermo. A report from the European Severe Weather Database found that a waterspout — a type of tornado that forms over water or moves from land into the water — had developed over the area where the yacht was anchored on Monday morning.

One body was found on the hull of the ship. Among those rescued were Lynch’s wife, Angela Pakaris, the yacht’s captain, and a one-year-old girl. Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter is still missing.

An Italian newspaper reported Tuesday that Bakaris and her husband were not initially worried when they woke up at 4 a.m. local time when the boat ran aground.

She added in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in a hospital in Sicily that she only began to worry when the yacht’s windows were smashed and chaos broke out.

Lynch, a 59-year-old technology investor and entrepreneur, was acquitted in June in a fraud trial related to the multibillion-dollar sale of Autonomy, a software company he co-founded, to Hewlett Packard. Prosecutors alleged that Lynch planned to inflate Autonomy’s revenues before the sale.

Morvillo, a US attorney at Clifford Chance, was successfully involved in defending the case against Lynch.

A spokesman for law firm Clifford Chance said the firm was “deeply shocked and saddened”.

“Our thoughts are with our partner Christopher Morvillo and his wife Nida, who are among those missing,” the company spokesman added. “Our top priority is to provide support to the family as well as our colleague Ayla Ronald, who survived the incident with her partner.”

One survivor, Charlotte, 35, described how she struggled to cling to her one-year-old daughter Sophia as the yacht was washed away, according to a report by the Italian news agency ANSA.

“In two seconds I lost the child in the sea, then I immediately hugged her amidst the roar of the waves. I held her tightly, close to me, while the sea was stormy. Many people were screaming,” she told the Italian news agency ANSA.

A source familiar with the operations told CNN on Monday that the UK’s Maritime Accidents Investigation Branch is deploying a team of four inspectors to Palermo to conduct an initial assessment of the yacht. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not say when the team would arrive in Sicily.

The 56-meter (184-foot) yacht, called the “Baiziane,” which sailed under the British flag, had mostly British passengers and crew on board, as well as two Anglo-French, one Irish and one Sri Lankan, an Italian coast guard spokesman told CNN.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told CNN that two of the country’s citizens There were citizens involved in the incident but they are not among the missing. The nationality of the deceased has not been revealed.

The world’s longest aluminium mast measures 72.27 metres (237 feet), the Italian shipbuilder Perini Navi said on its website.

The mast was three metres (10 feet) shorter than the world’s tallest mast, according to Guinness World Records. The 75-metre (247-foot) carbon fibre mast belonged to Mirabella 5, a yacht built by Vosper Thornycroft in Southampton, U.K., according to the Guinness World Records website.

This is a developing story and will be updated. Kathleen Magramo and Sabrina Souza contributed to the report.