Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy were among the guests on board the Bayesian, which sank in a storm off the Sicilian coast.
Hiscox has led tributes to Jonathan Bloomer (70), the insurer’s chairman, who died along with his wife Judy in the sinking of the superyacht Bayesian off the coast of Sicily on 19 August.
Bloomer (pictured) had been chairman of Hiscox since July 2023. He also served as chairman of investment firm Morgan Stanley International since November 2016.
His career spanned five decades in financial services, including serving as chief executive of insurer Prudential from 2000 to 2005.
Bloomer had joined Prudential as its finance director from accountancy firm Arthur Andersen in 1995, rising to become its CEO within five years.
A statement from Hiscox described Bloomer as a well-liked, highly-valued colleague and friend to the firm, adding: “Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones at this difficult time.”
The 56m UK-flagged superyacht Bayesian, valued at £30m and named after a British mathematician, was close to the Sicilian city of Palermo and carrying 22 people, 12 passengers and 10 crew, when a storm struck in the early hours of Monday 19 August, creating waterspouts, described by experts as a ‘Black Swan’ freak weather occurrence.
The luxury vessel was owned by British entrepreneur Mike Lynch, founder of technology firm Autonomy, who was also among the five dead so far named, with his daughter Hannah still missing at time of publication. Clifford Chance lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo were also among the victims.
The group had been holidaying in the Mediterranean to celebrate Lynch’s recent high-profile acquittal from a fraud trial in San Francisco, just two months prior, which had marked the culmination of a 12-year legal battle in a multi-billion-dollar case.
The US fraud case arose from the $11.7bn sale of Autonomy, the company that Lynch had co-founded in 1996, to US technology giant Hewlett-Packard in 2011, with the acquirer alleging that Autonomy’s leadership had fraudulently inflated the value of the firm prior to its sale. Bloomer had testified as a defence witness for Lynch at his friend’s trial.
Aki Hussain, group CEO of Hiscox, commented on the death of Hiscox’s chairman: “It was a privilege to have known Jonathan and to have benefitted from his generosity and wisdom over the last year.
“His deep experience across our industry and in the broader business arena, combined with his personal values, made him both an excellent chair and a person I was proud to know and work with. His advice and support were immensely valuable to me, and he will be dearly missed.”
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