Jonathan Bloomer, who is among the missing after a luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily, capped a long career as an accountant and insurance executive with an unusual star turn: defence witness in Mike Lynch’s San Francisco trial.
Lynch, who is also missing after the yacht Bayesian foundered in bad weather on Monday, was accused of fraud over the sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11bn in 2011.
The 70-year-old Bloomer, who was named to Autonomy’s board as a non-executive in 2010, told the court in May that Lynch “wasn’t particularly interested in the finance side” and preferred to focus on strategy and products. A day later, Lynch took the stand himself and in June he was acquitted.
Bloomer and his wife, Judy, who is also missing, were among the guests invited to Lynch’s yacht to celebrate the victory.
Bloomer is best known for his time at the helm of FTSE 100 insurer Prudential, which he joined as finance director from accountancy firm Arthur Andersen in 1995. Within five years he had ascended to the top job.
Aviva chair George Culmer, who was Prudential’s financial controller, recalled a very smart executive who was always “gracious, charming, affable and fair”. “He always built very good teams,” said Culmer. “People were loyal to him. They would follow him.”
Bloomer’s time as Prudential chief executive was turbulent, coinciding with the dotcom crash and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. While he was credited with spearheading the group’s growth in Asia and bringing down costs, shareholders were dealt a number of disappointments that ultimately led to his exit after five years in the job.
First came an unsuccessful multibillion-pound effort to buy US insurer American General and absorb it into the Pru’s US arm in 2002, which was heavily criticised by shareholders and knocked the company’s share price.
Then, in 2003, Bloomer cut the dividend for the first time since the first world war to shore up the company’s depleted capital, despite repeated assurances the group planned to keep raising the payout.
After the launch of a surprise £1bn rights issue in 2004 and despite previous support from Prudential chair David Clementi, he was ousted in a boardroom coup and replaced by Mark Tucker in 2005.
“He was not a natural CEO,” said one former colleague. “He wasn’t ruthless enough. He was too trusting.”
After his decade at Prudential, Bloomer joined private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management as European partner, where he remained for six years until 2012.
In the years that followed his exit from the Pru, Bloomer had a plural career, combining a clutch of non-executive roles that included the position as audit committee chair at Autonomy that would put him at the centre of a case in which it was alleged Lynch’s software company falsely inflated its revenues.
Bloomer told the court that he met Lynch at a conference in the early 2000s. Autonomy’s chairman, Robert Webb, approached him around 2010 looking for a board director who “understood the city” and could “think about the way Autonomy was seen” there.
HP argued that Autonomy used lossmaking hardware sales to make up shortfalls in its quarterly revenues. Big-ticket hardware sales would have been noted in Autonomy’s audit reports, which would have been reviewed by Bloomer as part of his boardroom role.
During his testimony at trial, Bloomer explained that some of the accounting later flagged as suspicious by US prosecutors was acceptable under UK rules.
Associates described Bloomer as a man of humble background who found it easy to connect with colleagues and inspire loyalty, while also maintaining a certain distance.
“He didn’t like hierarchy or status,” said one senior insurance executive. “But he also liked to dress well in nice suits and he enjoyed the finer things in life.”
A physics graduate of Imperial College London, Bloomer founded a pension buyout business, Lucida, backed by Cerberus, which was sold to Legal & General in 2013.
The sailing and rugby enthusiast also served on the boards of several financial services companies, including legal services company DWF Group and Arrow Global, a European investment firm.
Sir Nicholas Lyons, the former Lord Mayor who championed the Mansion House Compact to promote more productive investment, said Bloomer had been a keen advocate of the initiative.
“He was very supportive of the agenda and of getting financial services back into the spotlight of the economy,” Lyons said.
Bloomer’s highest-profile recent roles have been at Morgan Stanley International, the UK-based arm of the Wall Street bank, where he has chaired the board since 2018, and London-listed insurer Hiscox, where he has served as non-executive chair since last year.
“We are deeply shocked and saddened by this tragedy. Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular the Bloomer family, as we all wait for further news from this terrible situation,” a Morgan Stanley spokesperson said.
Hiscox’s chief executive Aki Hussain said the company was “deeply shocked and saddened by this tragic event”.
Additional reporting by Patrick Jenkins and Michael Acton
