Christmas is a time of togetherness, and the December leg of The Superyacht Forum Live Tour afforded a number of the editorial team the opportunity to reunite with some industry friends a little closer to our SW11 home, with a festive tour of some of South West London’s local pubs.
 
For my final festive foray in the superyacht industry, I was joined by master-broadcasters-in-the-making, Rory Jackson and Jack Hogan on a six-pub tour of our glorious capital to meet some of the sharpest minds in, law, insurance and brokerage.
 
London is both the world’s, and our industry’s epicentre for both law and insurance, while it remains the symbolic home of yacht brokerage. It therefore felt like the perfect setting to stage our first market-centric focus for the Live Tour series.

 

The beauty of this series is that we get to spend time with people who are friends, as well as experts. And what better way for us Brits to reunite with old friends than in the pub, especially at this time of year.
 
Christmas is a time of hope – and more so at the moment than in any time in recent history. That’s why it was such a pleasure to hear from those who know - the lawyers and brokers negotiating new-build and sale/purchase contracts – about how intense the market activity remains; any concerns I had of a bubble about to burst have been massively allayed by these conversations alone.
 
Conversely, it has been a tougher market landscape for the insurance sector. While the plethora of new orders has meant plenty of business for brokers and underwriters alike, as a sector that has battled with unsustainable downward pressure on its pricing for years, this renewed aggressive competition has the potential to be destabilising, just as pricing was returning to a more sustainable level.
 
In his typically off-piste style, Jack wanted to incorporate one conversation that was utterly divergent from the market-centric conversations mentioned above. In his insatiable appetite for exploration he took the ‘what’s on the horizon brief’ more literally, and I’m sure viewers will be able to identify the outlying, adventurous and exploratory conversation within.
 
But, rather than detracting from the content itself, I’d like to thank our participants for taking part in this edition of the Live Tour:
 
Giovanna Cabbia, Clyde & Co; Adam Ramlugon & Mark Needham, Hannaford Turner; Nick Davies & Neal Bateman, Cookson Adventures; Paul Miller, Millstream Underwriting; Will Christie, Christie Yachts; Mark Feltham, Willis Towers Watson.
 
And on their behalf, and from all of us at The Superyacht Group, we’d like to wish everyone in the industry and around the world, a very merry Christmas, and a happy and prosperous New Year!

Profile links

Clyde & Co

Willis Towers Watson

Millstream Underwriting Ltd

Hannaford Turner LLP

Christie Yachts

Cookson Adventures

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