Ten years after the crash, I T they're hardening the concrete outside the "gigayacht" sheds at the j Benetti shipyard in Livorno. The ! reason is simple: they don't want ! the ground to crack when the world's biggest hybrid yacht is hauled across it next spring with 60 tonnes of lithium-ion batteries in its belly. The scene is not especially glamorous - for now the giant yacht is still shrouded in scaffolding - but it still tells an extraordinary story. From Italy to the North Sea and Turkey to the United States, the financial crisis left the superyacht industry staring into the abyss. It's etched in the memories of those who witnessed it, and not in a good way. Alberto Galassi, now chairman of Ferretti Group, says it "was like The Lord of the Rings but the bad guy wins. It was a very, very dark scenario." The fabulous extravagance of superyachts became, for a few years at least, unacceptable even for the lucky few who still had the means to buy one. Customers retrenched, dealers despaired and shipyards went to the wall. The number of superyachts on order fell off a cliff, from 1,008 in 2008-2009 to 763 the following year, bottoming out at 692 in 2013, a decline of just over a third.
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