Alfa Nero: ‘Not everyone can land a blue whale deal’
Northrop & Johnson broker Richard Higgins brought the buyer for Alfa Nero.
“Who dares wins” is the motto of the British SAS but it could equally apply to the new owner of the seized yacht Alfa Nero.
The 82m Oceanco with the complicated backstory has finally sold to a European buyer for a $40m after being detained in Antigua for two years.
“Once the government had clean title and the liens and encumbrances were removed from the boat, it came down to a game of numbers,” says broker Richard Higgins of Northrop & Johnson, who represented the buyer.
“The buyer was fully aware of the risk he was taking on, but he is a businessman and was willing to take the risk if the numbers were right. Luckily, they were.”
READ: Antigua ‘very happy’ with $40m sale of Alfa Nero
Tainted
Alfa Nero was seized, and then deemed abandoned, from the sanctioned Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev in March 2022. It has been laid up in Falmouth Harbour ever since as lawyers wrangled over ownership and responsibility for running costs, including crew wages.
The US Department of the Treasury eventually lifted sanctions to allow the yacht to be sold last year and it was nearly snapped up by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt for $67m at auction. However, Guryev’s daughter Yulia Guryeva-Motlokhov then filed a lawsuit claiming it was hers.
Without a clean title, Schmidt withdrew, leaving the government of Antigua and Barbuda still saddled with the hefty costs, reported to be nearly $100,000 a month.
Higgins and his client began circling, not put off by Alfa Nero’s tainted past. He went out to Antigua three times and was in constant dialogue with the government to ensure a clean title and bill of sale.
“It was a very complex deal, not a standard one you would do on the brokerage market,” says Higgins. “It came down to right time, right place but it wasn’t something we’d plucked out of thin air. We’d been planning and working on it for several months.”
READ: ‘I wasn’t a great yacht broker’ – Bob Denison
The 82m Alfa Nero was built by Oceanco in 2007.
Research
Valuing a vessel with Alfa Nero’s chequered recent history required Higgins to lean into his 15 years’ experience and to muster the special forces of Northrop & Johnson’s wider network, evaluating variables such as the current brokerage market, what a new-build to the same spec would cost now and what it might sell for in the future.
“It is not just a simple formula, you’ve got to do your research,” says Higgins.
A skeleton crew had been retained to keep Alfa Nero ticking over, including running the air conditioning to preserve the leather and wood interiors.
“All in all, the condition of the vessel wasn’t too bad,” says Higgins. “The paint was fine, the teak was still in very good order. It needs some TLC and some investment and we’re fully aware of that. The buyer is going to spend money on it.”
Potential
The transaction took 10 days from getting onboard with the buyer to completing the final negotiations and closing the contract, which is “phenomenal” for a boat of this size, says Higgins.
“I was working with the client for several months to get him fully engaged in buying a boat like this,” he adds. “Everyone had to do their homework and make the boat as good as it could have been to impress the buyer. We had to do budgets and set aside how much it would cost to put her back in the condition she deserves to be in. After a few visits the client fell in love with it, he knew the potential it could have.”
Proceeds of the sale will go towards Antigua’s national debt, said Prime Minister Gaston Browne. “We’re very happy that we’ve been able to remove ourselves from a major liability, in addition to ridding ourselves of a potential disastrous outcome,” added Darwin Telemaque, CEO, Antigua and Barbuda Ports Authority, speaking to Superyacht Investor. “I would have been happy to have $100m but I’m also aware cost is not just revenue.”
The plan is to put the yacht back in Class, get the right flag status and update some mechanical areas before putting it on the charter market.
“It is such an iconic vessel, you don’t want to see it just left and dilapidated and ruined and in mothballs,” says Higgins.
READ: ‘The word yacht management is completely misunderstood’
Alfa Nero was seized by the Antigua government in 2022.
Blue whale
Alfa Nero is the second largest yacht Higgins has sold after the 95m Blohm & Voss Palladium, purportedly owned by non-sanctioned Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, in 2022.
“It was a very complex deal, but we sold it within three months to an American owner,” he says. “It was a really good milestone for my career and set me off on the larger vessels, so I was very happy.”
Closing deals on showpiece yachts such as Alfa Nero and Palladium needs a certain gravity and is key for a broker’s resume.
“It’s a pinnacle for sure,” he says. “Not everyone can land a blue whale deal. It takes a lot of time, a lot of experience and a bit of luck. It also makes a huge difference working for a very well-known yacht brokerage firm. That does help give you a lot of pedigree.”
READ: ‘I thought I’d been absolutely brilliant’ – Goldsworthy
Higgins discovered yacht broking through his wife who was working as an assistant to a broker at Camper & Nicholsons in London. Intrigued, he left his job with a firm organising events for the military to work as a junior broker with Camper & Nicholsons in 2010 before moving with his wife to Monaco.
“I was always advised it will probably take 10 years to get a very good grasp of the industry and how all transactions happen,” he says. “Every client, buyer or seller, is different and has different motives.”
Some, it seems, are willing to take risks to land whales.
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