Morgan Stanley CEO Jonathan Plummer among those missing

Morgan Stanley International boss Jonathan Plummer and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo are among six people missing after a luxury yacht sank in a storm off Sicily on Monday, Sicily’s civil protection agency told the BBC.

British tech mogul Mike Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18, were reported missing after the crash, which occurred about 700 metres (2,300 feet) off the shore of the Mediterranean island.

The 56-metre-long Bayesian vessel was carrying 22 people, including Britons, Americans and Canadians. Fifteen people were rescued, including a one-year-old British girl. The Sicilian Civil Protection also confirmed that the body of the ship’s cook had been found.

The yacht capsized at around 5 a.m. local time after a severe storm caused waterspouts, or rotating columns of air, to form.

The search is scheduled to resume at 06:30 local time (05:30 GMT) on Tuesday, Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported.

The British-flagged yacht, carrying 10 crew and 12 passengers, sank near the port of Porticello, east of the Sicilian capital Palermo, on Monday.

Eyewitnesses told the Italian news agency ANSA that the ship’s anchor was down when the storm hit, causing the mast to break and the ship to lose its balance and sink.

The wreckage lies at the bottom of the sea at a depth of 50 metres, and divers are preparing to resume the search for the missing.

Mike Lynch, one of the missing passengers, is known to some as the “Britain’s Bill Gates.”

He was a co-founder of software company Autonomy, before selling it to US computing giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011 for $11bn (£8.6bn).

But an intense legal battle following the high-profile acquisition has loomed over Lynch for more than a decade. He was acquitted in the United States in June of multiple fraud charges, for which he had faced two decades in prison.

The yacht sinking came on the same day that the lawyer for his co-accused in the fraud case, Stephen Chamberlain, confirmed his client had died after being hit by a car in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.

The registered owner of the Bayswater yacht is Revtom Ltd. The luxury yacht can accommodate up to 12 guests in six suites.

The yacht’s name is believed to be inspired by Bayesian theory, on which Mr Lynch’s doctoral thesis was based.

Mr Lynch’s wife, Ms Bakaris, was named as the sole legal owner of Revtom, which is registered in the Isle of Man.

Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Pakaris, was one of the 15 people rescued.

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

The mother, who was named locally as Charlotte Golonski, later described how she carried her baby above the sea. To save her from drowning.

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

She said they woke up to the sound of “thunder and lightning and waves that made our boat dance”, and felt like “the end of the world” before they were thrown into the water.

“I lost my daughter in the sea for two seconds and then quickly hugged her amidst the roar of the waves,” the newspaper quoted her as saying.

The survivors said the trip was organised by Mr Lynch for his co-workers.

Following the initial disaster, a nearby Dutch-flagged ship rescued survivors from the waves, and cared for them until emergency services arrived.

After the storm passed, Captain Karsten Borner said his crew noticed the yacht behind them had disappeared.

“We saw a red signal, so my colleague and I went to the site and found the lifeboat floating on the surface,” he told Reuters.

He added that the lifeboat was carrying 15 survivors, three of whom were “seriously injured.”

Eight of those rescued are receiving treatment in hospital, the Italian Coast Guard said.

The Foreign Office said it was providing support to a number of British nationals and their families following the incident in Sicily. The UK Maritime Accidents Investigation Service is also sending a team of inspectors to carry out an “initial assessment” of the sinking of the UK-registered boat.