Iskandar Safa is co-founder and CEO of Privinvest Group.
Born in Lebanon in 1955, Iskandar Safa is the CEO of Privinvest Group, a company with facilities in Europe and the Middle-East, specialising in naval construct, commercial vessels and superyachts. Privinvest also operates within the media, real estate and hospitality sectors.
Education
Iskandar Safa holds an MBA from INSEAD (France) which he obtained in 1982. Prior to this, in 1978 he graduated from with the American University of Beirut with a Bsc in Civil Engineering.
Career of Iskandar Safa
Iskandar Safa’s career has been internationally focused from the get-go. His first experiences have brought him to the US before sending him to Saudi Arabia to supervise an airdrome construction site in Riyadh. Yet it is through the creation of Privinvest, alongside his brother Akram, that Iskandar Safa makes his first foray in what was to become his focus for the decades to come: naval shipbuilding.
In January 1992 Iskandar Safa and his brother Akram bought, through Privinvest, the Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie (CMN), a then struggling major French shipyard based in Cherbourg (Northwest of France). Within a few years, Iskandar Safa would help the shipyard back on its feet through sign-offs of large purchase orders for a selection of prestigious marines and private clients. Today, CMN employs over 400 people.
In 2007, Iskandar Safa and Al Aïn International created together the Abu Dhabi Mar shipyard. Later on, in 2011, Privinvest would buy back the shares of Al Aïn International.
Privinvest is now a major player in the naval industry across several specialties (commercial vessels, military vessels, superyachts, marine renewable energies…) through its subsidiaries Nobiskrug, German Naval Yards Kiel & Lindenau (Germany), CMN (France), Isherwoods (United Kingdom), and PISB (Greece).
As CEO, Iskandar Safa continuously aims to develop the group activities further. This is why the Privinvest Media arm of the group was created in 2015.
Anecdotes
Nobiskrug, a Privinvest Subsidiary, delivered in February 2017 “Sailing Yacht A”, the most expensive superyacht ever built. Sailing Yacht A was designed by Philippe Starck.
