It’s been a difficult week for the 1%. There are only so many billionaires to go around and the “billionaires in peril roundup” took a few significant scalps this week.
Causing ripples of understandable anxiety in the ranks was the tragic sinking of the superyacht off the coast of Italy. Superyachts were previously the ultimate “happy place” of the super rich, by dint of size. That sort of thing is very happiness inducing. Competitive pet celebrity wrangling on the superyacht for the duration of the sailing season can be equally gratifying. For example, Jeff Bezos notched Leonardo DiCaprio, Katy Perry and Legolas the Elf this European summer. Nice one, Jeff.
The superyacht that tragically sank with several 1% team members on board had the distinction of having the tallest mast in the world, which must have been very gratifying. Until it wasn’t. That mast may have played an outsize role in the sinking. Mike Lynch, the tech billionaire whose mast it was, was celebrating — with his family and his banker, the chair of Morgan Stanley, and his lawyer — the fact that he'd finally dodged the fraud charges that had him feeling low for almost a decade after the sale of his Autonomy Corp.
On the same day, the CFO of the company, Stephen Chamberlain, who'd also spent the last 10 years mired in the same set of unique problems, was wiped out while jogging in a country lane in the UK. Like I said, a difficult week, perhaps verging on a bloody awful week for the rich and shady.
Exercising can be very dangerous for the 1%. That lot regularly die or suffer severe physical damage on their bikes as careless drivers take them out with wild abandon. Google CEO/CFO bicycle accidents and you realise that it's carnage out there, which is why Peloton should have continued doing brilliantly. But that isn't so. Another billionaire opened up this week about personal disaster. The founder of Peloton, John Foley, explained to the New York Post that he lost everything in the aftermath of Covid. It seems people left their fixed bikes and their upbeat remote trainers and took their lives in their hands on the streets again. He had to sell his beach house in the Hamptons and resort to selling rugs.
Most discouraging for lovers of superyachts is that they had, until now, been a safe space. Much like the PJ (that's private jet to you), but with the added advantage that you could easily locate the yacht in international waters and enjoy quality time on the high seas beyond the borders and jurisdictions of the paltry nation states that might inadvertently upset you on your way to the cash jackpot.
Superyachts are like giant playgrounds with wonderfully evocative mastheads (Bezos again) and masts. Sadly, nation states just aren't respecting the rules of the game. The confiscation of superyachts in retaliation for the Russian invasion of the Ukraine seems a bit petty. The billionaires whose yachts have been thus becalmed must be taking some satisfaction from the fact that the nation states are realising that it costs a helluva lot to keep these behemoths berthed in the long term (but that's a story for another column).
It is, however, relevant to Pavel Durov, a billionaire concerned with keeping one step ahead of the long arm of nation states that don’t like him. He also bulked up the numbers on the “billionaires in peril” list, with an untimely arrest.
One minute he was updating Telegram — his slap in the face to the surveillance bureaucracy messaging app — on the deck of a superyacht in international waters, posting pictures of his buff six pack while stepping into an ice bath quoting Marcus Aurelius (the stoic Roman Emperor) and the #PutinShirtlessChallenge, granting interviews to Tucker Carlson, making allusions to Russian prison jokes with his choice of background décor — the next he was arrested as he stepped off his private jet in Paris by the very state that once granted him asylum from the Russians. Is nothing sacred any more?
Sadly, nation states just aren't respecting the rules of the game. The confiscation of superyachts in retaliation for the Russian invasion of the Ukraine seems a bit petty.
He's fighting the good fight against the long arm of the law. Supreme billionaire Elon Musk, is with Durov, spawning the #FreeDurov hashtag. So is everyone I know who rushed to download the Telegram app when it became clear that nation states were looking into our phones and could transcribe all our WhatsApp messages faster than you could post an anatomically rigorous picture of your nether regions to the wrong group.
The fact that child pornographers, sex traffickers, international drug cartels, crypto bros and terrorists or freedom fighters (depending on your perspective), also love the platform shouldn't make Durov personally liable for everything that happens on the network, should it? Just read the stuff being posted on Truth Social and on X and weep. I can't open X for fear of sudden sightings of unsolicited masts.
It’s a cesspool of information out there, which may explain why governments trying to curb all this enthusiasm for free speech are planning to use actual readings from the sewers — not the networks — but the one’s running into the sea, to determine illegal drug usage to within a square metre of elimination. Now that is surveillance of a different stripe. At least on your superyacht all effluent is released into the great ocean immediately, dispelling any kind of danger of the defecatory variety.
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