If money talks, wealth whispers. Yacht brokerage “whisper listings”—secret sales—are usually transactions people hear about long after the sale is made public, or not. J.K. Rowling’s 290-foot Samsara (ex-Cloud 9), Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev’s 220-foot Anna (now named Ambassador and owned by a Hong Kong billionaire), and Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal’s 365-foot Alaiya (ex-TIS) all form part of the elite, zero-publicity club. Protected by non-disclosure agreements and market discretion, whisper listings now account for 50 per cent of Cecil Wright’s annual brokerage sales, according to the company.

Unlike an off-market sale, where an owner is approached to sell their yacht privately, a whisper listing is signed up to a central agent but kept completely hush-hush. In other words, please sell my boat, but don’t tell anyone about it.

“A whisper listing is much harder to sell, but they’re more common than you think,” says one London broker, who requested to remain anonymous. “The largest brokerage sale in history was a whisper listing, but few people know about it to this day.” It’s so secret, he won’t reveal which yacht and owners. His agency currently has a yacht for sale that only three people in the company are aware of. All other brokers who have been selected to assist with the sale have a history of selling boats for over US$100 million, or more.

Typically, the covert pitch suits high-profile clients who shy away from media interest, like when Mark Zuckerberg acquired Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin’s 114m Feadship on the quiet, now named Launchpad. “Either the client’s high profile or the boat’s high profile, or both, but either way they don’t want the story in the papers,” says the London broker, who has two whisper listings on his books at present, and six in total within the company.

“Press attention doesn’t help,” adds Monaco-based broker Antoine Larricq, as most ultrahigh-net-worth individuals (defined by Bloomberg as someone with a net worth of US$30 million or more) can’t afford a gigayacht. The pool of potential buyers is fascinatingly small.

Some seek professional discretion—“I have one owner who believes a public sale is bad for business because of his nationality,” says the London broker—while others need liquidity but “worry that shedding a high-value asset could signal they’re in financial trouble,” adds Henry Smith of Cecil Wright.

Rigorous regulatory checks, including KYC (Know Your Client) and those for anti-money laundering, are part of the sales process. Each photo of the yacht also has a watermark that is unique to the broker, so if the image is leaked, the owners can trace it back to the broker.

But keeping a potential sale under lock and key can have its drawbacks.

According to Larricq, who handles between one and 10 whisper listings a year, the 319-foot Carinthia VII began as a covert sale in 2019 before going public two years later with a significantly reduced price tag. Larricq sold Carinthia VII on the open market in 2022 to Argentinian entrepreneur Rubén Cherñajovsky for a reported US$103 million, a whopping US$80 million less than the original asking price.

The phenomenon is more prevalent with large custom yachts of around 230 feet or longer. Yet whispered or not, covert yacht sales are “nothing special” within the secretive yacht industry, says Larricq. As far as he’s concerned, once superyachts reach a certain size, high levels of confidentiality become an everyday part of transacting with the highest echelon of buyers. Just another day in the life of a superyacht broker.

This story was previously published on Robb Report USA.