G iovanna Vitelli’s apprenticeship was more intense than most. She remembers travelling the world as a child with her father, Paolo Vitelli, as he opened new yacht dealerships and manufacturing sites. At six years old she was given a blank sheet of paper and asked to write down everything she thought was wrong with a boat as she toured it.
“Then when I was taken to the shipyard on the next visit, you can imagine how happy I was when something that I had written down was incorporated into the next unit,” she says. Now, Vitelli, 49, sits atop the biggest empire in yachting as the chairwoman of Azimut Benetti, the enterprise founded by her father. The company has reported revenues of €1.
3 billion for the past year, has an order book valued at €2.6 billion, employs 2,500 people and for nearly 25 years has produced more superyachts than any other shipyard in the world..
