Iskandar Safa, CEO and co-owner of the Privinvest Group, was born in Lebanon in 1955 to a Christian family. He graduated from the American University of Beirut in the late 1970s with a degree in civil engineering. After periods spent on engineering projects in Saudi Arabia and the United States, he moved to France and in 1982 was awarded a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires. In 1986 he was appointed President of the import-export company Triacorp International.

In 1992 Iskandar Safa embarked on his highly successful shipbuilding career. With the support of the French Government’s Inter-ministerial Committee for Industrial Regeneration, he purchased Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie, an ailing naval shipyard in Cherbourg. Within two years he had restored its fortunes; it is now a thriving enterprise with 400 employees. In 2007 he established the Mar naval construction site in Abu Dhabi in collaboration with Al Aïn International. In 2011 Privinvest, a company founded by Iskandar and his brother Akram, purchased Al Aïn International’s shares to form the Privinvest Group.

PrivInvest is one of the world’s leading privately-owned shipbuilding concerns, specialising in the design and production of naval and commercial vessels as well as private yachts. Its state of the art shipyards in the UK, France, Germany, the Mediterranean and the Middle East have delivered more than 2,000 vessels to naval and civilian clients around the world, including more than forty national navies. The Group’s research and development in recent years has focused particularly on marine renewable energies such as hydrokinetics.

Since 2011 Iskandar Safa has also been vice-president of the Marfin Investment Group, and president of FIMAS SA, a prestigious French real estate company which owns the Marbres de France marble processing plant in the Herault region.