UPDATE, JUN 12, 2026: The Court of Florence has ruled that five superyacht owners with projects at The Italian Sea Group are not subject to the protection measures that bar creditors from canceling their contracts. The five owners had challenged the court-ordered freeze, arguing that they aren’t creditors in the traditional legal sense. In a press release this week, The Italian Sea Group notes that the court partially sided with the owners. Specifically, their yachts aren’t assets belonging to either the company or its parent corporation. Nor are they assets instrumental to ongoing business at the yards. Importantly, the ruling impacts just these five owners. The Italian Sea Group says it doesn’t impact its ongoing efforts to stabilize financials and operations, or ongoing negotiations with other creditors.
Read on for our original article.
An Italian court has granted The Italian Sea Group creditor protection on a temporary basis, as per its request. The same protection extends to the Group’s parent company and Celi, its interior-fabrications company.
According to a press release from The Italian Sea Group, the Court of Florence approved the measures on April 20. They are retroactive to the date of filing, March 16, for a maximum of four months.
The court ruling bars creditors from taking a variety of actions. They cannot receive priority to acquire shares in or the entirety of the Group without the parent company’s permission, for example. They also cannot initiate and/or enforce asset seizures or account freezes. This same protection extends to superyachts currently in build at The Italian Sea Group’s yards. (The Italian Sea Group builds yachts under the brands Admiral, Tecnomar, Perini Navi, and Picchiotti. It further owns NCA, a refit and repair company.) Forcing the Group into insolvency or bankruptcy liquidation is barred as well. Creditors additionally cannot refuse to honor existing contracts or change their terms in a way that would harm the Group. Finally, no one can revoke previously approved lines of credit if based only on The Italian Sea Group not meeting obligations preceding the protection enforcement date.
The request for creditor protection follows the company voluntarily entering a process to reorganize and restructure its creditor obligations. The Group discovered financial irregularities, publicly revealing them in March. It filed a criminal complaint shortly thereafter, claiming senior executives colluded to provide CEO Giovanni Costantino with false information regarding cash flow, order budgets, and bank statements. Budget overruns impacting most megayachts under construction were discovered in February.
Related to this, GC Holding, The Italian Sea Group’s parent company, loaned the Group €25 million (about $29 million) to stabilize finances. The auditing firm KPMG is in the midst of a forensic accounting analysis to determine responsibility for the financial irregularities and the exact amount of budget overruns. Its findings are due by early May.
Activities related to management and yacht construction reportedly remain on their regular schedules.
The Italian Sea Group theitalianseagroup.com
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