princess yachts new ceo

By SuperyachtNews 25 Aug 2023

Princess Yachts appoints new CEO

Princess yachts has announced the appointment of will green as ceo, succeeding antony sheriff in the position….

Antony Sheriff has stepped down as CEO of the Plymouth-based yacht builder and has been replaced as CEO by Will Green, who steps up from his role as Commercial Executive Director. In February 2023 Princess Yachts , the UK's largest luxury boatbuilder was sold to KPS Capital Partners, a US-based private equity firm.

Will Green joined Princess Yachts in 2003 and has helped shape the Company as Chief Sales Officer and more recently in his position of Chief Commercial Officer. Previously Head of UK Sales at luxury car manufacturer Aston Martin, Green oversaw the strategic direction of Princess’ global sales.

“It is an honour to be appointed chief executive of Princess. Those who know me will recognise the passion I have for the brand, so this is an exciting opportunity to shape the next chapter for the business and build on its amazing legacy," said Green.

“I am excited and privileged to work alongside a very talented team that has achieved a long track record of success and, with the support of our controlling shareholder KPS Capital Partners, I know we can build on this further with investment in some key areas and by focusing on what we do best – building exceptional yachts for our customers.’

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New Princess Yachts boss announced as Antony Sheriff steps down

Will Green promoted up from commercial director to take over in top job six months after firm acquired by US private equity giant

• 09:42, 25 AUG 2023

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The boss of Plymouth luxury boat-builder Princess Yachts has left the firm and been replaced in the top job by its commercial director. Antony Sheriff has exited the Stonehouse-headquartered manufacturer after being in charge for more than seven years.

He has been replaced as chief executive by Will Green who steps up from being executive director commercial. The change comes six months after Princess Yachts was taken over by major US private equity firm KPS Capital Partners.

Mr Sheriff took over at Princess Yachts in January 2016. The 59-year-old, Swiss-born, American-Italian had previously headed supercar maker McLaren for a decade before resigning in 2013 and later took the company to court.

During his spell at McLaren he conceived a range of ground-breaking supercars and also brought success to Princess Yachts with profitable growth and increased revenue before it was pitched into losses during the Covid pandemic. He nevertheless steered the company through the worst of the pandemic when it was hit with a “pingdemic” nightmare in 2021 with up to 15% of staff off work and boat building delayed

Princess Yachts said Mr Sheriff is leaving the company to pursue other endeavours and said: “We thank him for his contributions and wish him well.”

The company said his successor, Mr Green, has been a pivotal member of the Princess Yachts team for 20 years, and instrumental in driving the sustained period of commercial success enjoyed by the business in recent years. He has been critical to establishing the company as one of the leading luxury yachts manufacturers in the world today.

Previously head of UK sales at luxury car manufacturer Aston Martin, Mr Green has overseen the strategic direction of Princess’ global sales, continually developing the customer experience with a highly-professional network of distributors and dealers representing the brand in more than 65 countries worldwide.

Mr Green said: “It is an honour to be appointed chief executive of Princess. Those who know me will recognise the passion I have for the brand, so this is an exciting opportunity to shape the next chapter for the business and build on its amazing legacy.

“I am excited and privileged to work alongside a very talented team which has achieved a long track record of success and, with the support of our controlling shareholder KPS Capital Partners, I know we can build on this further with investment in some key areas and by focusing on what we do best – building exceptional yachts for our customers.’

In February 2023, Princess Yachts was taken over by New York-headquartered KPS Capital Partners when it entered into an agreement to acquire a controlling interest in Princess Yachts (Holdings) Ltd. It said the investment would accelerate the company’s growth and innovation.

Meanwhile, Princess Yachts will be showcasing two “world premieres” at this year’s Cannes Yachting Festival with the new Y95 and Y80 being displayed for the first time. The company

will also be announcing two new future models as part of their continued investment in new and innovative product offerings.

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David King to step down as Chairman of Princess Yachts

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Written by Zuzana Bednarova

Having been one of the original founders of the leading UK luxury yacht shipyard Princess Yachts in 1965, David King is to stand down as Chairman at the end of August. Citing his wish for new minds to lead the company forward, Mr King will remain a director and concentrate mainly on new yacht design as well as development, an area in which he has always been actively involved.

After a period of consultation, the Princess board of Directors has appointed Philippe Mellier as its new Chairman.

Mr  Mellier is the CEO of The De Beers Group, the world’s leading diamond company, and was previously the Executive Vice President at Alstom s.a., the world’s leading high-speed train producer. Prior to this, Mr Mellier worked in the automotive sector, holding senior and board-level positions within Ford, Renault and the Volvo Group. He brings to the role uniquely useful experience in high-quality, performance-focused product manufacturing, marketing and sales.

A French national, domiciled in the UK, Mr Mellier will continue as CEO of The De Beers Group and serve in a non-executive capacity at Princess.

Princess Yachts’ Managing Director, Chris Gates, said, “David King is and always will be a part of Princess. He has been a magnificent servant to this Company and the wider British boatbuilding industry. This change of roles will allow us to strengthen and grow the business while still benefiting from David’s unmatched experience and skill in designing the best motor yachts in the world. We look forward to welcoming Philippe into the Princess family and benefitting from the vast experience he brings from the luxury goods and high-performance manufacturing sectors.”

In a statement to the Princess workforce and wider family, David King said, “It has been an incredible journey since 1965. I could not have conceived of the growth and success we have achieved over the years, success that is entirely due to the wonderful people that work here and our Distributors around the world.”

“From our humble beginnings we have become a world-leading company respected across the international boatbuilding sector and one that enjoys secure ownership and management.”

“It has been my privilege and pleasure to work alongside you all and I look forward to working with you still, in my role focusing on product development.”

Please contact CharterWorld - the luxury yacht charter specialist - for more on superyacht news item "David King to step down as Chairman of Princess Yachts".

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Princess Yachts appoints Will Green as new CEO

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By Katie Scott   30 August 2023

British shipyard Princess has announced the new appointment of Will Green as its new CEO, bringing over 20 years of experience to the table and a vision to solidify the brand's position as a leading name in the yachting industry.

Taking over from former CEO Antony Sheriff, who left the British brand to pursue other endeavors, Green has extensive knowledge of the well-known motor yacht fleet and has spent many years building up the firm as the Commercial Executive Director. 

Fully backed by the controlling shareholder KPS Capital Partners, the new appointment comes at an exciting time with new models and luxury yacht charters set to be displayed at the forthcoming Cannes Yachting Festival plus ongoing developments with Princess' hometown of Plymouth featuring an exclusive Freeport zone.

Commenting on his new appointment, Will Green says; "It is an honor to be appointed CEO of Princess Yachts. Those who know me will recognize the passion I have for the brand, so this is an exciting opportunity to shape the next chapter for the business and build on its amazing legacy.”

Attending the 2023 Cannes Yachting Festival , which is scheduled to run from 12-17 September, Princess will be showcasing the Y95 and Y80 along with some of its most popular models. A dedicated team will also be on hand to conduct tours and provide priceless advice and insight into not only yacht ownership but experiencing Princess yacht charters too.

If you're planning a France yacht charter , the Cannes Yachting Festival is one of the biggest yacht shows in the Mediterranean and is definitely worth a visit to gain inspiration for next year's adventure. 

To find out more about booking a Princess yacht charter, and combining the Cannes Yachting Festival into an existing South of France yacht charter , contact your preferred yacht charter broker today for more details. 

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Princess Yachts Appoints Will Green as CEO

Having spent two decades with the Plymouth shipyard, Will Green succeeds Antony Sheriff who steps down after an eight year tenure.

Princess Yachts has announced the appointment of Will Green as CEO. Green has been a key member of the Princess team for 20 years and most recently served as Executive Director (Commercial). The shipyard described Green as “instrumental in driving the sustained period of commercial success enjoyed by the business in recent years” and “critical to establishing the company as one of the leading luxury yachts manufacturers in the world today”.

“It is an honour to be appointed CEO of Princess,” Green professes. “Those who know me will recognise the passion I have for the brand, so this is an exciting opportunity to shape the next chapter for the business and build on its amazing legacy.

• READ MORE: Eva Orsi “making dreams come true” at Tankoa Yachts

“I’m excited and privileged to work alongside a very talented team, which has achieved a long track record of success. With the support of our controlling shareholder KPS Capital Partners, I know we can build on this further with investment in some key areas and by focusing on what we do best – building exceptional yachts for our customers.”

Princess will be staging the  world premieres of the   Y80 and Y95 at this year’s Cannes Yachting Festival along with the announcement of two upcoming models. For more information on Princess Yachts, click here .

This article was first published on www.yachtstyle.co

For more stories on leaders in the yachting industry and beyond, click here .

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Princess Yachts CEO Antony Sheriff on a new generation of yachting

The Princess Yachts’ X95 flybridge

Antony Sheriff has transformed the fortunes of Bernard Arnault’s yachtmaker Princess, creating boats that are stylish, in demand and environmentally innovative, for a new generation of consumer. LUX gets his story

Antony Sheriff

“It’s the sports car of the range. The hull reduces drag by 30 per cent, and it has sports-car-like performance and a Pininfarina design.” Princess Yachts CEO Antony Sheriff is enthusing over a projection of the R35, his company’s cool-looking 35-foot yacht, the latest in a series of innovations he has overseen in what is fast becoming known as the most dynamic yachtmaker in the world.

Follow LUX on Instagram:  luxthemagazine

“Sometimes,” he says, “if you are doing something new and are innovating, customers don’t know what they want until you give it to them.” Sheriff has been responsible for a number of innovations at the company, which is owned by LVMH-owner Bernard Arnault through his private equity company L Catterton, both on the product side and on partnerships.

The stateroom (above) and exterior of X95 yacht

In 2016 he launched a collaboration with the Marine Conservation Society, aimed at helping clean up ocean plastics, conserve coral and aid the conservation of marine creatures such as turtles. The Italian-American, who in his previous job launched McLaren’s hybrid P1 hypercar as CEO of the company’s road-car division, is disarmingly straight talking. “We are an industry which makes beautiful products, but we haven’t always been that mindful of the effects they have. We wanted to do something quietly to reduce the impact of yachts on the sea.”

He says the impetus has not – yet – come from the market, but from his own initiative. “We are trying to do the right thing and would rather be on the front foot than the back foot. People enjoy yachting because of the beautiful environment, and we need to try and maintain the water in the state we found it in.”

Read more:  Chelsea Barracks is redefining London’s garden squares

Sheriff says that, as with cars, the need to innovate for environmental reasons has actually ended up bringing better products to market. He points to the example of the X95, which has up to 40 per cent more space than its predecessor while using 30 per cent less fuel and matching it in performance; and the Y95, another super-slick collaboration with Italian design house Pininfarina , which seems to have taken up its unparalleled design of luxury modes of transport where it left off with Ferrari after the end of a collaboration there spanning decades.

The R35 performance sports yacht

Sheriff is a little scathing about some of the bloated products on offer from other yachtmakers, and adds: “We are putting the elegance and refinement back in yacht design, creating yachts that look like they belong on the ocean.”

Ultimately, though, he says the biggest change during his tenure since 2016 has been the change in the nature of the consumer. “Increasingly people are buying yachts not as status symbols but as places to spend a wonderful time with family and friends. You go on a family vacation in a yacht and it’s the best vacation possible: the kids stay together with you for fantastic family time, they can’t run away to the nightclub, and you get to spend time with each other in private in a beautiful place.” And, if some of the latest Pininfarina designs continue in the same vein, on a beautiful place, too.

Find out more: princessyachts.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 2020 Issue .

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Powerplay: Will Green

Almost 20 years to the day he joined british builder princess yachts, in september 2023, will green was announced as the company’s new ceo. during the cannes yachting festival, green outlined his vision for the future of one of the world’s leading boatbuilders..

11 January 2024

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It was, perhaps, a fitting start for a new love affair when KPS Capital Partners announced around Valentine’s Day in February last year that it had acquired a controlling ownership stake in UK-based yacht builder Princess Yachts.

Heralding a new era of investment for the marque, which had celebrated a period of unprecedented demand under the stewardship of Antony Sheriff, in late summer, the new majority shareholders announced that Sheriff was stepping down and Will Green, who joined Princess on 3 September 2003, would take over as the new CEO. Here, Green outlines the opportunities unfolding for the builder and his vision for the yard’s future.

Ocean magazine: What was your original role at Princess Yachts, and how did it evolve?

Will Green: I joined when company founder David King was still managing director, and I started as assistant sales director under David Pyle on the commercial side of the business. I was the succession plan for David Pyle and joined the board a couple of years in, eventually taking over from him when he retired.

What will you look to change or implement over the next five years?

In my view, a lot of the hard work has been done already. I’ve been on the board for 18 years, so I’ve been part of the product strategy and the evolution of the platform-building strategy, which I really believe in – it has worked for us both industrially and commercially.

Now, we need to take all those fantastic ingredients, having the best boats in the business and the best product range in our sector, and build on what we’ve already done with the brand. The industrial challenges we’ve had are solving themselves as the supply chain shakes off its COVID hangover – there’s still a bit of disruption, but it’s a lot better than it was.

We’ve also got some of the most skilled and experienced boatbuilders among our workforce of 3,500 at the yard, and we have a lot of families with two generations working for us now, even three generations, which is fantastic. The brand is unrecognisable from what it was when I started.

Back then, the distributors did a lot of the work and were the brand for all intents and purposes. Now, they’re our partners and we do it all together, but we have the overall brand vision.

Most of all, though, we’re a family, both within the company and with our customers. You can feel that in Australia, and it’s like that everywhere.

A lot of our distributors have been with us for decades and know the brand DNA, so it makes things relatively easy when we can listen to those who know the company so well.

Princess has experienced unprecedented demand for yachts like the Y72 and others at the top of the range, with large numbers of orders. What capacity are you working at, and will there be investment in facilities under KPS?

Based on today’s output and efficiency, we’re full, with 3,500 people building 200 yachts a year. I believe that with the same resources, we can build more than that by being more efficient, so we’re getting back to core principles and getting the right people in the right place – we’ve got a lot of good experience in the company. It’s not straightforward, but I do see a clear path ahead industrially.

We’ve also reached the point where every model line is pushed to the gunnels. Investment will mean every line can move up a shed, enabling the next lifecycle of products to have space to grow – that’s why it’s so essential. Also, our South Yard is in the Freeport area, which offers tax and customs benefits and incentives to support growth, innovation and investment in the region, and we’ve been a driving force in that initiative. We’ve agreed investment with KPS and they’re very supportive – they’re not afraid to invest in capacity and people if it’s the right thing.

How is the new shareholding structured, and what can you tell us about KPS?

KPS Capital Partners has a controlling interest, so they’re effectively our owners. Our previous shareholders have retained a small minority share, which we’re happy about. KPS is an unusual private equity company because they don’t believe in financial engineering and haven’t leveraged us full of debt.

For them, it’s all about taking a manufacturing company – that’s all they buy – and making them better, fitter and returning them to quality profits. It’s about having a plan you can deliver and hopefully becoming even more customer focused. Obviously, I’ve been on the customer side for 20 years – everything we do has ultimately got to be for the customer’s benefit.

It will be nice to change the company’s direction slightly so that everyone on the shop floor is just thinking about the end buyer. We have customers at the shipyard every day, but there’s not much interaction – in the future, I want to get the customers and the shop floor closer together.

What are your key geographic markets, and how is your presence in the Asia-Pacific region?

The Med is our biggest market, partly because there are so many nationalities there and we have so many different distributors selling into that market. We’re very strong in the US and that has grown over recent years too. And we’ve been active in the Asia-Pacific region since before I joined, so we’ve got a good position in Asia and Australasia, and the Middle East as well. We’re everywhere there’s a seaside – and a lot of places there isn’t one.

We’ve got 44 distributors and they’re all among the most respected people in their respective industries – Greg Haines and Scott Davis in Australia are fantastic, as is the Williamson family in New Zealand.

What sizes do your current models span, and what are your plans for future yachts?

Our current models span 40 to 95 feet, from the V40 to the X95 and Y95 across five ranges. We’ve got a fantastic order book, more demand than supply, and brilliant partners who’ve been very loyal to Princess.

Our mission now is to grow the company organically in a healthy way, and that will perhaps include building a different board or innovating in different directions. We haven’t defined any of this yet, but there’s an opportunity for us.

I’d like us to build bigger boats again. Although there are also reasons not to, it’s a case of never say never. Job number one is to focus on making the business profitable, sustainable and healthy, and to make everyone in the chain – from the shop floor to our customers and shareholders – feel part of the family.

Do you have any plans to build smaller?

I’d like to, if we have the capacity. There’s definitely an opportunity for a smaller Princess, and I believe in widening the base of the triangle as 50 percent of our customers come back and buy another boat, usually a bigger one. I’d love to add a 35-footer, although it’s not top of the priority list right now!

How are you planning to evolve toward more hybrid options, and what else are you doing to be more sustainable?

We have a vision of being a more sustainable boatbuilder and while other companies are shouting louder about it, we’re doing at least as much as, or probably more than they are. For the yachts, we have hybrid options for the X95 and Y95, and on paper, they look fantastic. That’s a commercial proposition – you can buy one today but it’s relatively expensive and, by itself, isn’t going to impact our overall footprint massively.

But we do have a biomass boiler that’s going to heat the whole South Yard facility, running on off-cuts from the joinery department, and we have solar panels on the shed roofs that will generate nearly 3-million kilowatt hours of power a year. That’s real – and we’ve also got 40 to 50 projects of varying levels of importance, from reducing landfill waste to increasing recycling.

I’ve got ideas and thoughts about how the product line-up might look in 10 years, but we haven’t defined what Princess will be yet – that’s what we need to get into next. Every boat we develop and every project we undertake, we put saving weight and increasing hull efficiency at the core.

It’s not about hybrid solutions per se; it’s about burning less diesel and delivering more performance per horsepower – and that’s what we’ve been about for the past 10 years. People are using their boats differently now, and with stabilisation, people are happy to travel more slowly and enjoy the journey rather than race to their destination.

Are there any trends that will inform the design of Princess models?

Everyone is doing different things and, of course, there’s room for that in the industry. We have our core ingredients of what makes a Princess a Princess, and generally, that’s a boat for passage – making for serious boaters.

If something will make a tangible difference to owners, we’ll seriously consider it, but if it’s a fad that makes it look cool at a boat show, it’s probably not for us – although I’m not against innovation!

Sometimes our customers come to us with ideas, and we’re happy to be told where we should be doing things differently or consider different features.

Will KPS have input on the shape of the product line?

Not really. The management team runs the company and is there as a support network. They’re ambitious and excited about the industry, and a healthy level of growth is an expectation for any new owner, but so far, there’s been no direction on product plan.

Their expertise lies in operational efficiency, and their story is amazing – it started with a steel mill the management took over and, in doing so, saved a small town where half the population worked at the mill.

KPS was formed on that success story, so there’s a turnaround philosophy that’s part of their raison d’être. They’re great people, and I’m very excited about it.

princessyachts.com princessyachts.com.au

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