Law firm Clifford Chance ‘in shock’ after lawyer goes missing in yacht disaster By Reuters

By Sara Merken

(Reuters) – A prominent New York lawyer who was among six passengers missing from a yacht that sank off the coast of Italy was traveling with his longtime client, British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch, just weeks after he helped to avoid conviction in a 12-year legal saga.

Divers were still searching Tuesday for defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Christopher Morvillo, a partner at the Clifford Chance law firm, and his wife Neda, along with Lynch and three other missing passengers. There are 15 known survivors.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long (184 ft) luxury superyacht, was carrying 22 people and anchored off the Sicilian port of Porticello when it was hit by a fierce storm before dawn on Monday and sank.

Ayla Ronald, a senior associate at Clifford Chance in London, and her partner were among the survivors, the London-based global law firm said in a statement on Tuesday. Ronald also represented Lynch, according to her profile on the firm’s website.

“We are shocked and deeply saddened by this tragic incident,” said a spokesman for Clifford Chance.

Morvillo, 59, was Lynch’s lead attorney and won the acquittal in June after a three-month fraud trial in San Francisco stemming from Hewlett-Packard’s ill-fated acquisition of software company Lynch Autonomy and represented the British entrepreneur since 2012. .

He is the son of Robert Morvillo, considered one of the most skilled criminal lawyers in New York before his death in 2011. The younger Morvillo is also a prominent white-collar defense attorney and a former assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan who assisted to his criminal investigation. the September 11 attacks.

Lynch sold Autonomy to HP (NYSE: ) for $11 billion in 2011, but the deal unraveled spectacularly, with the US tech giant accusing him of fraud.

Morvillo put Lynch on the stand to cross-examine his client at his U.S. criminal trial this summer, a bold move that paid off when the jury acquitted him. Lynch testified that he was not involved in the transactions that prosecutors said constituted a massive accounting fraud at Autonomy.

In a podcast interview with attorney David Oscar Markus posted last week, Morvillo said he first joined Lynch’s legal team in November 2012, shortly after HP valued Autonomy at $8.8 billion .

“It covered a third of my career,” Morvillo said of his work for Lynch.