Stassi Anastassov has not waited for an industrial plan to tell Ferretti Group employees how he intends to assess them. He does so in the sixth letter addressed to the company since taking office, setting out what he calls his “Business DNA”: six criteria - owners, brands, results, innovation, execution and meritocracy - through which decisions, people and proposals will be filtered from now on. One hundred days, he writes, are enough to begin getting to know a complex company such as Ferretti Group, but probably too few to change it. The letter therefore does not recount what has been done so far; instead, it establishes the yardstick by which what comes next will be judged. The letter was conceived as an internal communication, but its reach is broader. As with other messages Anastassov has addressed to employees, this one has also been shared informally with selected media outlets, including PressMare. It therefore serves a dual purpose: it speaks directly to employees in the tone of someone addressing his own team, while indirectly reaching yacht owners, suppliers, shareholders and the Group’s stakeholders more broadly, progressively communicating his vision to the outside world.

The starting point is unequivocal. Anastassov sums up the responsibility entrusted to him by the Board as “delivering superior returns for ALL our shareholders” - the capital letters are his - immediately adding that this can only be achieved by keeping Ferretti financially strong, competitively strong and supported by a high-calibre team at every level of the organisation. From this come the six priorities, which the CEO himself calls “obsessions”: rather than an industrial programme, they are the filter through which he intends to measure decisions and results.

The first obsession concerns the yacht owner, whom he describes in no uncertain terms as “the Boss”. Put like that, the statement is almost self-evident for a group operating in the high-end yacht industry; it becomes more interesting when Anastassov explains its practical implications. He defends the willingness to make “significant gestures” towards an owner when necessary, because an owner’s trust and the reputation of the brands are worth more than the immediate cost of an intervention. The real objective, however, is not to become more generous, but to reduce the number of occasions on which such generosity becomes necessary: preventing problems, detecting them earlier, solving them faster and learning from what has happened.

The same reasoning underpins his focus on the Group’s seven brands - Riva, Pershing, Ferretti Yachts, Wally, Custom Line, CRN and Itama - which Anastassov describes as extraordinary assets, while warning that even the strongest brands cannot live on their history alone. “Brands need parents,” he writes, using a metaphor that points to a precise managerial concept: each brand must know what it stands for, who it serves and why it is different from the others, but there must also be someone who feels directly responsible for it. Brand heritage thus becomes a competitive advantage to be protected and developed, rather than something to rest on. While owners and brands belong to the traditional vocabulary of yachting, the third obsession takes the letter firmly into the realm of numbers. “Money. Money. Money.”, Anastassov writes, referencing ABBA, before explaining what winning means to him: growth in revenue and order intake, profits, margins, cash generation, return on capital, share price and multiples. Being busy, having a sound strategy or producing convincing presentations is not enough: “results equal results”, and sooner or later they must be visible in the numbers. Not necessarily in the short term, the CEO points out, because products, technology, quality, people, brands and the owner experience must all work together to create sustainable value.

It is in the section devoted to innovation that perhaps the most interesting observation about his first 100 days emerges. Anastassov says he has found many good ideas and, in several cases, different people independently reaching the same conclusions; some of those ideas, he adds, have been discussed for years. His assessment is that Ferretti does not lack intelligence or imagination: the room for improvement lies in its ability to accelerate, increase accountability and turn ideas more quickly into something owners and captains can “see, touch and use”. Technology, too, is subjected to a pragmatic test: it matters only when it improves the owner experience, the product, people’s effectiveness or quality, or when it lowers costs and makes the company faster. Speed returns as a key theme in the fifth obsession, execution. Anastassov translates professional pride into deliberately simple rules: every problem must have an owner, decisions must be made at the right speed, commitments must be honoured, emails deserve an answer and numbers must be checked. Above all, an owner’s problem must always be regarded as the company’s problem. In his definition, execution means doing what you said you would do, when you said you would do it and to the agreed standard, consistently over time.

The final part of the letter moves into more sensitive territory: Ferretti’s internal hierarchy. “Meritocracy. Meritocracy. Meritocracy.” is Anastassov’s chosen heading, as he says he wants to avoid organisations where proximity to senior management is perceived as more important than results. He explains that he has spent a significant part of his first 100 days with second-, third- and fourth-line managers, asking what motivates them, what career prospects they see for themselves and whether they believe hard work and performance are genuinely recognised. The stated objective is an organisation in which talent and potential are identified, developed and rewarded, and where “politics, tenure, friendship or access to the CEO” cannot substitute for results.

It is perhaps this final observation, together with the call for greater speed in innovation and execution, that makes the letter more than a managerial self-portrait. After 100 days, Anastassov is not yet presenting an industrial plan, but he is making explicit the filters through which proposals, people and decisions will pass. “These are my standards,” he tells employees. The message reaching beyond the shipyard gates is equally clear: Ferretti has brands, expertise and ideas; the new CEO wants to turn them, with greater speed and accountability, into owner satisfaction and, ultimately, numbers.