Industry Perspective: Money makes the world go round
Martin Bellamy of Salamanca Group gives his perspective on the economic aspect of owning a superyacht. He argues that a yacht is still very low on the list of things to buy for UHNWIs.…
Martin Bellamy, group chairman and chief executive of Salamanca Group took to the stage during the Global Superyacht Forum at the end of last year to give his perspective on the economic aspect of owning a superyacht. He argues that a yacht is still extremely low on the list of things to buy for the ultra-wealthy.
“I think one of the biggest problems that you face at the moment [with ownership], is it's a pure lack of liquidity. I would argue, perhaps slightly controversially, if you are a fairly wealthy person, one of the last things that you actually buy is a yacht. Because it's almost like you've run out of things to spend your money on.
If you're in the high net worth bracket as opposed to the ultra-high net worth bracket, you've seen your liquidity diminish massively [...] I think one of the interesting things as well is that a lot of people are very focused on wealth preservation these days. If you look at something like the real estate markets in places like London and New York. One of the reasons why I think those markets are so buoyant is because a lot of wealth has gone into those markets as a point of wealth preservation.
I think it's quite interesting if we look at what's happened to Sunseeker. They know the target market. They know where the liquidity is; they know where the sweet-spot is. It is about understanding those markets and every single market is different.
I think that where private aviation has come a long way is that they've brought the costs of servicing down. They've brought the costs of ownership down. They've demonstrated to the market that some of the planes can be extremely economical. They can, actually, make sense from an owning perspective. Maybe, that's what this industry needs to do. It needs more self-regulation. It probably needs to demonstrate to the clients, actually, that owning a yacht can make sense from an economic point of view.”
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