TECH GIANT

Camper & Nicholsons’ recent achievements include selling the 105m Lady Moura and adding the 126m Octopus to its charter and management fleets, but CEO Paolo Casani is most excited about the company’s focus on proprietary technology to engage clients in the new era.

- JOHN HIGGINSON

What have been the biggest changes at Camper & Nicholsons in your six years as CEO and how has the job compared to your time as CEO of Azimut-Benetti and President of Fraser?

Over the past six years, Camper & Nicholsons has evolved into one of the most important and complete luxury service companies for yachts for two main reasons. One, we’ve greatly improved the integration of all our departments, and two, we’ve been facilitated by the acquisition of a new technological platform that allows us to build new, ultramodern tools for our sales teams.

Our technology gives us incredible strength and quality on the market and increases the value of the company assets. Technological advancements are not only one of the most important changes of the past few years but will also be increasingly important for the coming years as well.

As for my earlier roles, working for a shipyard and working for a brokerage is quite different. Probably the only common thing is that we work with the same clients, but everything inside the companies is totally different.

Why has C&N focused so much on its online presence, software, and communication?

I think we are almost the leader in this area in the brokerage industry, but if you ask me if I’m satisfied, I’d tell you no. Camper & Nicholsons is growing well, thanks to the investment we’ve made, but our plans are more and more ambitious, so we plan to do much more.