Bernd Küster has agreed to buy a 32-metre motor yacht for €8,500,000 and wants it under the Malta flag. He asks the firm to form a Maltese company to own it, to administer that company, and to provide one of its two directors. Nothing has been signed and the sale is due to complete in six weeks.
- Client: Bernd Küster, a German national born in 1966, resident in Hamburg, with no previous connection to Malta. Introduced by a Genoa yacht brokerage the firm has acted alongside twice before.
- Instructions: form Halcyon Marine Ltd to own the yacht, register the yacht under the Malta flag, and provide registered office, company secretary and one of two directors. Küster will be the other director and the sole shareholder.
- Source of wealth: he founded Küster Kälte-Technik GmbH, a refrigeration engineering business, in 1998 and sold all of it in 2022 to a listed Nordic group. The German commercial register records the change of ownership, the buyer announced the acquisition, and he has supplied the notarised sale agreement and his 2022 and 2023 German tax assessments.
- The yacht: built 2019, currently Cayman-flagged, sold by a Monaco-based owner. The €8,500,000 price sits inside a published range of €8,000,000 to €9,500,000 for the model and year.
- Funding: €6,500,000 from his personal German account and €2,000,000 from Küster Beteiligungs GmbH, his wholly owned German holding company, whose accounts show it holding the sale proceeds. Payment is to the brokerage’s escrow account at an Italian law firm.
- Registration sought: commercial, so that the yacht may be chartered
- Charter arrangements: none. No charter manager appointed, no listing with a broker, no crew engaged and no projections. Asked about it, he said he “expects to charter it in the weeks the family is not using it”, and that his German tax adviser recommended the commercial route.
- Intended use: the western Mediterranean, berthed at Palma. His family have chartered a yacht each summer for eleven years.
- The company: he asks that it have no employees and no premises beyond the registered office, and says board meetings can be held in Malta whenever the firm’s director requires them.
- Screening: no sanctions, PEP or adverse media results on Küster, on either German company, on the seller or on the brokerage