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Bavaria Yachts files for Administration


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M Y cousin had a 42 sent here ,he asked for the small keel and short rig , he got small keel short rig but the sail safe were for the large rig , they to,d him to send them back or get them cut down at his cost , the varnish on the cupboard doors was only on the face and not in or around the doors so we revarnished them a year ,after the keel was opening up at the join they told him just fix it his cost ,he spent $275,000 for this boat not a good deal

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Venture capitalists.

Buy an asset rich company, strip all the equity out of it, run up big debt, normally under some 'growth strategy', once you've extracted every last ounce of equity, tip it over...

While you are at it, see how much cash you can withhold, shift around, play musical chairs with and hide from the debtors.

 

Its a standard formula that has been done many times before, will be done many times again.

 

There is more than one big name Euro brand that has recently been sold to venture capitalists, Hanse I think, and whats that Slovenian brand? make good boats (but still look the same as the others).

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translated from the Deutsche

http://www.boote-magazin.de/aktuell/news/sondermeldung/a49124.html

 

Oaktree and Anchorage, the shareholders of the business, have decided to cease all liabilities for the maintenance of the business...

 

Debt at several hundred million euros (i.e. the venture capitalists managed to get a sh*t load of equity out of the business...)

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In the US where we have really lax retirement laws, the vulture capitalists 

also steal the pensions.  

 

The practice is now so widespread that there are consulting companies 

that specialize in advice on pension stealing. 

 

Kinda thread drifty, sorry

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M Y cousin had a 42 sent here ,he asked for the small keel and short rig , he got small keel short rig but the sail safe were for the large rig , they to,d him to send them back or get them cut down at his cost , the varnish on the cupboard doors was only on the face and not in or around the doors so we revarnished them a year ,after the keel was opening up at the join they told him just fix it his cost ,he spent $275,000 for this boat not a good deal

That's a shocker. Would leave a bit of a sour taste in your mouth. And people moan about the mantenance on old kiwi built boats.

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M Y cousin had a 42 sent here

 

he spent $275,000 for this boat not a good deal

That's the thing, Bavaria target the cheap end of the market. $275,000 for a new 42 ft boat? I would have thought $275,000 would have got a 32 or 35 ft boat, not a 42.

 

But the key question, is that a good deal or not?

We can pontificate about build quality and design life etc, but a lot of people get on the water via this avenue.

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Boatbuilding industry as a whole seems to be a tough business and not best managed by every player.

 

In the last few months we’ve seen arguably the world’s most expensive and prestigious production brand (UK’s Oyster) and now the cheapest (Germany’s Bavaria) go into liquidation.

 

So whether they are low volume high price prestige (Oyster) or high volume low price mass market (Bavaria) it seems that the owners & managers of these boatbuilding businesses struggle to run them viablly.

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The headline is a bit misleading, they have put themselves into administration. Whether they can trade out of it remains to be seen. I would guess with their aggressive expansion of models and their purchase of the Nauticat cat manufacturer they stretched themselves too far and now their venture capital owners do not want to inject any further funds.

In response to Chariots comment, the NZ Boatbuilding industry never really recovered after the '87 crash. There have been very few production keel or power boats built after that time, and the major damage was done on the power boat side by Riviera with their cheaply built heavy slugs, there being far more custom launches than yachts built in NZ.

It is a world wide issue, in USA Catalina is the only surviving yacht builder with a full range, Hunter were bailed out a couple of years ago but do not have many models. The custom builders there like Morris and Lyman Morse survive mainly on refit work, Goetz - competitor with Cooksons went to the wall a few years ago as did Carroll Marine. In Australia Seawind moved production to Vietnam whilst Mc Conachy's shifted to China. In UK Moody's (in their old form) folded years ago as did Westerly. In Europe Najad went under altho have recently resurfaced. The key reason the French companies became so strong was the subsidies from the French govt to put French built boats into charter.

One other reason that has contributed to the demise of custom building is delivery periods, whilst some people enjoy being involved in the build process, the younger "now" generation do not want to wait the 18-24 mths for a boat to be delivered.

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Friends from the UK bought a different boat after going in a test sail in one and could see the ocean washing past...through the topsides!

I think this is the brand that Brian at Halfmoon Bay said they have to prop when out of the water as the hull can't support its weight on the keel. He had one there that had hit Liz reef one Xmas.

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Friends from the UK bought a different boat after going in a test sail in one and could see the ocean washing past...through the topsides!

I think this is the brand that Brian at Halfmoon Bay said they have to prop when out of the water as the hull can't support its weight on the keel. He had one there that had hit Liz reef one Xmas.

Seen that on an old kiwi design

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