Italian shipping executive Paolo Scerni has died in a car crash.
The 46-year-old International Andromeda Shipping shareholder and director is understood to have been driving back to Italy from Switzerland on Tuesday when he was involved in the fatal collision.
Colleagues at the Monaco-based tanker owner and manager confirmed the incident.
“Paolo passed away on Tuesday night in a car accident,” Andromeda chief operating officer Mario Guglielmini told TradeWinds.
“He was a friend, a great human being and a valued member of our team for five years, and he will be missed immensely.”
Remembered in Italy
Scerni will be best remembered in Italy.
In recent years, he had taken over running of the family’s Genoa-based shipping interests from his father, Gianni Scerni, a former chairman of Italian classification society Rina.
That had involved helping to unwind his Scerni family interests in a number of shipping investments, including a partnership with the d’Amato family on panamax tankers.
Scerni launched in a new direction in 2015 by becoming a director in Andromeda, which is owned by Giangiacomo Serena di Lapigio and Massimo Filoso.
That led to him becoming a minority shareholder in the tanker company in 2017.
“That was the natural evolution because I finally decided that the only way to remain a shipowner was to have some skin in the game on the management side,” Scerni told TradeWinds last year.
The deepening partnership with Andromeda resulted in two panamax and two aframax tankers, formerly controlled by the Scerni group, being sold to interests linked to the company.
