Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, and his wife, Judy Bloomer, are among seven high-profile individuals found dead as a result of a luxury yacht sinking near Sicily.
Other than Bloomers, the dead bodies of British tech mogul Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, and New York Attorney Chris Morvillo have also been found after an intense search operation where divers put their own bodies on the line to search the yacht’s wreckage.
At the time of the accident, 22 people belonging to the USA, Britain, and Canada were on board, of which fifteen were rescued after the disaster while a search operation was initiated to rescue the missing ones.
Special rescue teams flew more than 800 kilometers from Rome and Sardinia to Silica in order to conduct search operations in tight spaces, but their first attempt to search the wreckage failed. As the search was abandoned on the night of the accident, the probability of the victims’ survival essentially dropped to zero.
Reportedly, the yacht was on a normal trajectory before being knocked off by a violent storm, which destroyed the yacht’s structure and forced it to sink within minutes. The $40 million yacht belonged to Lynch, and its manufacturers believe that the tragedy happened due to the crew’s negligence instead of a structural fault.
The yacht’s manufacturers noted that the crew did not follow standard protocols and never called the passengers to the assembly point in anticipation of the storm, which led to the deadly accident. According to them, all the passengers would have gone back to their rooms safely after navigating the storm had the correct procedures been followed.
Lynch was the first-ever software billionaire in the UK and was popularly referred to as “the British Bill Gates.” He took a multi-billion dollar exit from his software company, Autonomy, in 2011 when he sold his venture to the famous tech company HP. The same deal later pushed him into legal troubles when HP accused the tech mogul of fraudulently inflating the company’s value, the charges which Lynch downplayed.
Lynch and HP remained entangled in legal battles for most parts of the last decade, and the tech entrepreneur was finally acquitted of all the 15 charges in June this year. Some reports indicate that Lynch was celebrating his acquittal with his legal team and allies in his luxurious yacht when it met a disastrous fate.
Bloomer also served at the helm of Autonomy’s audit committee and testified in favor of Lynch during the high-profile case.
