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Cruise News for the Corporate Travel Professional

January 2010 Edition

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Utopia Residences's Project Moves Closer to Realization

The residential cruise ship project unveiled by Beverly Hills-based Utopia Residences is fully equity financed and has the strong backing of the Samsung group that wants to use it to propel the into cruise ship building.

"The project does not require bank finance, it will be 100% equity financed. However, down the road we may take out some of that," Robb told Cruise Business in an exclusive interview.

Utopia Residences has "the firm backing" of the Frontier Group, a U.S. based private equity firm whose founders include Sanford McDonnell and Frank Carlucci, the latter also former chairman of the Carlyle Group and a former U.S. defence minister.

Utopia signed an initial contract with the Samsung group in South Korea earlier this week to construct a 105,000 gross ton residential cruise ship that will cost $1.1 billion. The company has worked with a number of European companies, such as the classification society DNV, consultant naval architects Elomatic and interior designers Tillberg Design to bring in high-quality expertise, Robb continued.

The choice of Samsung as the builder resulted partly due to the Frontier Group's previous business connections with South Korea. Senior executives of Samsung have stated that successful completion of the ship will be the highest priority for them, "because if they can build the most luxurious cruise ship in the world, they can build any passenger vessel."

Robb pointed out that the Samsung group, which has a balance sheet of $303 billion, does have the resources it takes to meet that objective.

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