Hopes fade for tycoon missing in yacht tragedy

Martin Bentham ITALIAN divers today continued their seabed search for the British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and five other passengers missing after the sinking of a luxury yacht in a "catastrophic" storm off Sicily, as hopes faded of any miracle survival.

Mr Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among those still to be found, along with Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of UK insurance firm Hiscox who is also the president of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife.

All were among the 22 passengers on board luxury yacht the Bayesian for what was said to have been a celebration to mark Mr Lynch's dramatic acquittal earlier this summer over fraud charges in the US.

He had feared spending years in prison if convicted in a case in which American prosecutors accused him of conspiring to inflate the value of his software company Autonomy before its sale to the US giant Hewlett Packard in 2011 in an $11 billion deal.