At 728 feet long, it was billed as the world’s largest yacht, a ‘floating millionaire’s row’ offering residents access to an ‘onboard beach’ and a 10,000-bottle wine cellar.
Five years on, however, the project has hit troubled waters after its millionaire mastermind was ordered to pay almost £750,000 to a British design company following a legal dispute over unpaid invoices.
A High Court judge said Carl Le Souef, the Australian entrepreneur and co-founder of Somnio, the company behind the scheme, had adopted a ‘cagey approach’ when cross-examined about where financial responsibility for the scheme lay.
Mr Le Souef, who drew inspiration for the concept during a 2007 stay on another exclusive residential ship, MS The World, denied personal responsibility for the financial aspects of the project, including initial sketches produced by Winch Design, a London-based studio that creates bespoke homes, yachts and aircraft.
But Lesley Anderson KC, a deputy judge in the chancery division of the high court, said Mr Le Souef, who had been ‘presented as being a man of some wealth’, bore responsibility for a deal worth £5 million in total, ordering him to pay Winch Design £733,750.
Mr Le Souef founded Somnio – meaning ‘To Dream’ in Latin – with Erik Bredhe, captain of MS The World at the time of his 2007 trip.
The pair envisaged creating a ‘highly exclusive, ultra-luxury residential yacht’ complete with 39 bespoke apartments at a cost of £8.1 million apiece.
The plan was to secure funding from a consortium of investors, each of whom would put down a non-refundable deposit of £100,000 to secure an apartment.
Featuring six floors and a variety of restaurants, bars, swimming pools and other facilities, including water sports and high-end medical care, the yacht remains classified as ‘under construction’.
Originally planned to launch in 2024, Somnio was billed as the world’s largest yacht, a ‘floating millionaire’s row’ offering residents access to an ‘onboard beach’ and a wine cellar
Carl Le Souef, the Australian entrepreneur and co-founder of Somnio, the company behind the scheme, denied bearing personal financial responsibility for the project
Designs for the 728 ft-long superyacht envisaged lavish interiors. Each of the ship’s 39 apartments was anticipated to sell for about £8.1 million
Winch Design joined the project in May 2019, a year before details of the scheme were made public, the court heard.
‘This is a dispute about an ambitious project to build a luxury yacht, comprising several, single, luxurious, residential apartments, which is intended to be one of the largest and most luxurious yachts ever to be built,’ said Judge Anderson, outlining the case.
The court heard that a formal contract for Winch’s work on the project was signed on November 4 2020, with a total cost of £5,285,000.
The business was expected to ‘provide interior and exterior, decorative design and other associated services for the luxury areas of a motor yacht project to be constructed at the Vard shipyard, in Aalesund, Norway’.
Some days after signing, a Winch employee sent Capt Bredhe two invoices covering work already done on the project.
The following month, on December 16, he told the business that they would both be paid the following day, apologising for the delay.
‘In fact, no payment was made,’ said Judge Anderson.
During the hearing, Mr Le Souef argued the reason for the delay was Winch’s ‘poor performance’. This was disputed by the judge, who said it in fact related to delays in a contract with the shipyard.
Plans for the yacht, which is classified as ‘under construction’, included a ‘spectacular’ 10,000-bottle capacity wine cellar and tasting room, and a choice of restaurants and bars
The first official interior renderings for the world’s largest yacht showed a jaw-dropping floating condo for the super-rich
Somnio promised in an earlier statement that the yacht’s lavish outfitting would ‘make it as close to living on a private yacht as you can get without buying one of your own’
Commenting on Somnio’s planned apartments, co-founder Captain Erik Bredhe said: ‘Beauty may be found as much on the inside of Somnio as it is on the outside’
By May 2021, Winch had issued three more invoices, none of which were paid.
The following month, the design company wrote to Capt Bredhe and said that they were no longer able to commit to the project because the disputed invoices remained outstanding.
Mr Le Souef met with executives from Winch and later wrote an email expressing appreciation for the company’s support, adding: ‘We do understand the issues caused with delays in payment.’
With the invoices remaining unpaid, Winch sued the company.
Mr Le Souef told the hearing that during a meeting at Lucio’s Italian restaurant in London in October 2021, then-Winch chairman Russell Beharell promised they would not sue him for the late payments. The judge deemed his claim ‘highly contentious’, adding that Mr Le Souef, was ‘surprisingly defensive’ in evidence.
‘Despite being an experienced businessman, he initially claimed not to have come across contracts although he shortly qualified that by saying he meant contracts relating to the general operations of the business which did not involve intellectual law,’ she said.
‘The evidence simply does not support that Mr Le Souef or Capt Bredhe communicated to Winch that Somnio was intended to be the counterparty in the contract and, indeed, all of the indications go the other way.
‘In any event, in my judgment, for the same evidential reasons, this is not a true case of mistake and it does not offend commercial sensibilities that Mr Le Souef was the true intended party.’
‘I am satisfied on the evidence I have heard (especially in light of his cagey approach to his cross-examination on the point) that Mr Le Souef was presented as being a man of some wealth and that at the relevant time the project was a lifestyle project for him and his supporters.’
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
