Tale of two Lynch men

Mike Lynch search

Colleagues and employers of the people still missing after the 56-metre luxury sailing yacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily have sent many messages of support over the last three days.

The missing include billionaire tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch , the non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley International Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy, and Christopher Morvillo, a partner with the law firm Clifford Chance. Mr Morvillo, who worked at the firm's New York office, was a lead defence lawyer in Mr Lynch's high-profile recent fraud case in the US. He was acquitted earlier this year.

Meanwhile, it emerged that Mr Lynch's co-defendant in a US wire fraud case, the former vice president of finance at Autonomy Stephen Chamberlain , died in a traffic accident in the UK on Saturday.

A federal court case in California, and a civil one in the UK, centred on the sale of Lynch's Autonomy to Hewlett Packard in 2011, an $11 billion deal that quickly went south and ended with HP accusing Mr Lynch and others of inflating the true value of the company.

After his victory in the court and return to Europe, Mr Lynch, 59, had been seeking to restore his reputation as one of Europe’s most successful entrepreneurs.

A complex rescue plan was being laid out to enter the wreckage of Bayesian, which is resting on the seabed off the coast, 50 metres below the surface.

The depth requires special precautions, limiting divers to rotating 12-minute shifts, which markedly slows down their work.

The search teams, each made up of two specialised cave divers, were working to open up access points to get inside the wreck, which is still intact, lying on its side, at a depth far beyond what most recreational divers are certified to reach.

Once inside, the divers were facing a tough task in getting around furniture that shifted in the cramped wreck to find the six missing people, who experts assume are still in the cabins, given that most would have been sleeping when the vessel sank.

Luca Cari, a spokesman for the rescue teams, said the search was proceeding much more slowly than another big shipwreck in Italy, the 2012 Costa Concordia cruise ship that flipped on its side off Tuscany's coast, because of the depth of the wreck and the space divers have to manoeuvre.

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Starmer's gamble

The unions are back, according to our City columnist Chris Blackhurst , who conjures the spectre of strikes and promises of higher public sector pay awards.

Resourceful leaders, notably Mick Lynch from the RMT , train drivers’ union, have already shown what can be achieved with targeted, staggered industrial action even under the current constrained legal situation. Now Labour is proving a willing partner.

Union membership in the UK has been in long-term decline, but in the brief period since Labour won the election , we’ve seen the granting of two above-inflation rises for junior doctors and train drivers. GPs are demanding better terms or they will strike. GPs! Others will follow.

That is bound to occur under a new law to be proposed by Labour when Parliament returns from the summer break. In the autumn, it will seek to repeal the Trade Union Act 2016, which set legal thresholds for how much support strike ballots require.

Under the statute, brought in by David Cameron’s Conservative government, at least half of a union’s membership must take part in a strike vote for it to be valid. Further, for the “important public services” such as the National Health Service and transport, at least 40 per cent must have voted for action.

Given the scale of Labour’s victory, plus the fact that a substantial number of its MPs are on union tickets, their offices paid for by unions, along with the party’s recent election campaign, the proposal is bound to soon become law.

When Prime Minister Keir Starmer looks back he could find his government's first economic decisions set something in motion that brought back inflation and undermined the investment supercycle he'd hoped to start.

Testing times

Bruising times at SaxaVord Spaceport on the Shetland Islands of Scotland , one of the UK's new space race big hopes.

A graphic fireball engulfed its launch stand during tests at western Europe ’s first fully licensed vertical launch spaceport on Monday night. After the collapse of a Virgin-led horizontal launch venture in Cornwall, there are fears for the UK's ambitions in the new satellite era.

An engine testing campaign was under way on the platform at the site in Unst, the UK ’s northernmost inhabited island, before a planned launch in autumn.

German manufacturer Rocket Factory Augsburg, or RFA, said no one was injured in the incident at SaxaVord Spaceport. The owners, husband and wife Frank and Debbie Strang, took over the former RAF base in 2004 where they have plans for a hotel and visitor centre.

Also involved is the German firm HyImpulse. SaxaVord 's spaceport includes three launch pads and a hangar for assembling rockets.

Video of Monday's test launch showed the engine exploding on the launch pad, with the entire structure engulfed in flames and thick smoke.

The spaceport recently received its licences from the Civil Aviation Authority and is designed for small rockets delivering payloads into low-Earth orbit.

RFA was running its tests there before holding the UK's first vertical rocket launch into orbit this autumn.