Sicily yacht latest: Morgan Stanley executive alongside British tech tycoon Mike Lynch confirmed missing

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it is supporting “a number of British nationals and their families” after a luxury yacht sunk off the coast of Sicily.

“We are providing consular support to a number of British nationals and their families following an incident in Sicily, and are in contact with the local authorities,” an FCDO spokesperson said in a statement.

Morgan Stanley International chair Jonathan Bloomer has been identified as one of the six missing people after a super yacht capsized off the coast of Sicily during a storm, an Italian official said.

The others missing from the sailboat Bayesian include British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his daughter, as well as Chris Morvillo, an attorney at British law firm Clifford Chance which represented Lynch in a massive fraud case, said Salvatore Cocina, head of the civil protection agency in Sicily.

Mr Bloomer was reportedly a close friend of Lynch.

The trip had been organised by Lynch for his work colleagues, according to reports, after he was cleared of all charges of fraud after being accused of inflating the value of his company when selling it to US tech giant Hewlett-Packard (HP).

He was extradited to the US last May for a trial that acquitted him on all 15 counts over the $11bn (£8.64 bn) purchase of his company.

The search operation continued overnight to find the six people missing after a luxury yacht capsized off the Italian island of Sicily in the early hours of Monday morning.

The coast guard said divers were inspecting the wreck of the Bayesian, which was lying at a depth of 49 metres.

After the accident, a Dutch-flagged vessel near the yacht rescued survivors from the waves, tending to them until emergency services arrived.

The Italian fire brigade reported that its divers had reached the yacht’s hull. Additionally, the brigade deployed helicopters to support the search operation.

One of the survivors, British tourist Charlotte Golunski, told la Repubblica she held her one-year-old daughter, Sofia, to stop her from drowning as the yacht capsized.

She, her daughter and her husband were among the 15 people who had been rescued from the luxury yacht Bayesian early on Monday.

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

She said: “I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning.

“It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.”

“Luckily the lifeboat inflated and 11 of us managed to get on board.”

Charlotte and Sofia are being treated in hospital, as is Sofia’s father.

The luxury yacht sunk off the coast of Palermo, Sicily.

The 56-metre long sailboat sank with 22 people on board shortly before sunrise, the Italian coast guard said in a statement.

“The wind was very strong. Bad weather was expected, but not of this magnitude,” a coast guard official in Palermo told Reuters.

Storms and heavy rainfall have swept down Italy in recent days – with floods and landslides causing major damage in the north of the country – after weeks of scorching heat.

The boat left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on 14 August and was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with a navigation status of “at anchor”, according to vessel tracking app Vesselfinder.

Global warming may have contributed to the freak storm that sank a luxury British-flagged yacht off the coast of Sicily, a climatologist has said.

Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian meteorological society, said the episode could have been a water spout, essentially a tornado over water, or else a downburst, a more frequent phenomenon that doesn’t involve the rotation of the air.

“We don’t know which it was because it all happened in the dark in the early hours of the morning, so we have no photographs,” he told news agency Reuters.

In Italy water spouts can involve winds of up to 200 kilometres (124 miles) per hour, while downbursts can produce gusts of around 150 km per hour.

Statistics show that downbursts are becoming more frequent around the country, which Mercalli said may be connected to global warming.

Storms and heavy rainfall have swept down Italy in recent days after weeks of scorching heat.

“The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), which is almost 3 degrees more than normal. This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms,” Mercalli said.

“So we can’t say that this is all due to climate change, but we can say that it has an amplifying effect.”

Some guests on board Mike Lynch’s yacht as it sunk were reportedly his from his legal team – invited there to celebrate the tech tycoon’s recent acquittal.

The 59-year-old’s superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of Monday morning with 22 people – ten crew members and 12 guests – on board.

Mike and his daughter, Hannah, 18, are amongst the six people still missing as one person has been confirmed dead and 15 were rescued.

According to the Telegraph, Mr Lynch had invited his legal team from Clifford Chance to celebrate his legal victory, in which he was cleared of all charges of fraud after being accused of inflating the value of his company after selling it to US tech giant Hewlett-Packard (HP).

The father of one of the survivors of the tragedy said she was a Clifford Chance lawyer who said that the trip had been a celebration.

He told the paper: “I have texted with my daughter and she hasn’t given me any updates about missing personnel or saved personnel. She has only said to me that there are deaths, and she and her partner are alive.”