Thursday, March 28

Saudi Crown Prince Sees Superyacht in French Harbor and Buys It for $500 Million that Afternoon

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We usually don’t write about superyachts (we generally try to keep in the 25 to 75-foot owner-operator range), but in this case, I couldn’t resist. I’ve been reading news items about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, 32, who’s trying to reform the government there, letting women drive, for example, and arresting other members of the royal family for corruption while cutting spending in an austerity program. Several stories mentioned that two years ago, while on vacation in the south of France, the prince saw a large yacht in the harbor and was so enamored of it he bought it that afternoon for about $500 million. Well, I certainly wanted to see what that yacht looked like.

As you can see in the pictures, the yacht, named Serene, isn’t too shabby. One of the largest, and most luxurious, yachts in the world, it’s 439 feet long with a 60-foot-plus beam, and it has 12 cabins holding 24 guests and 25 cabins holding 52 crew. For extras, Serene has two helicopter pads (and one resident helicopter), an all-electric submarine that can hold five people, three swimming pools, a spa, a climbing wall, a multiple-deck slide, a nightclub, a movie theater, a library, a gym, two hot tubs and much more.

Serene was built at Fincantiere in Trieste, Italy, one of the largest shipyards in the world, and was launched in August, 2011. Yuri Shefler, a Russian billionaire who made most of his money with Stolichnaya vodka, paid $382 million for it at that time. (Bill Gates, of Microsoft, chartered it in the Med for $5 million a week in the summer of 2014.)

When Prince bin Salman first saw Serene, he wanted it immediately, and he sent an aide to buy it from Shefler. They worked out a deal that afternoon, and Shefler moved off the yacht that evening.

 

 

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