Remon Vos: logistics magnate, sailing enthusiast and loyal friend of Monaco

As modest as he is influential, billionaire and passionate yachtsman Remon Vos leads a logistics and industrial real estate empire. An active member of the Yacht Club de Monaco, whose flag he proudly sails on seas around the world, the entrepreneur has built a lasting bond with the Principality.

From a distance, with his striking black sails, he could almost be mistaken for a seabird skimming the horizon – a cormorant, perhaps? In a burst of spray and foam, the yacht suddenly tacks, the boom sweeping the deck in one sharp motion, before resuming its furious pace across the water, leaping, cutting through waves, leaving rivals a few boat lengths further behind. On deck, precise commands ring out, orchestrating a finely tuned choreography – a marine ballet as technical as it is sublime. A foghorn sounds in the distance. The finish line is crossed. In the lead. Once again.

Black Jack 100 is the name of this 100-foot monohull (just over 30 metres), with a trophy cabinet to match: the Gotland Runt speed record in the Baltic Sea in July; victory a few weeks later in the 51st Rolex Fastnet Race, off Cherbourg; first place and new speed record at the Palermo-Montecarlo in August 2024 – beating its own 2015 record in the process. Each win brings glory to the Yacht Club de Monaco (YCM), under whose flag the boat sails. Each record is the product of its 29-strong crew, of skipper Tristan Le Brun – and of its owner, occasional helmsman Remon Vos.

Eastern Europe: young Vos’ land of opportunity

In Monaco, Vos is no stranger. Beyond his exploits on the water, the Dutchman is best known as co-founder and CEO of CTP, a logistics and industrial real estate giant in Central and Eastern Europe. Built from scratch, the company today owns some 13 million square metres of warehouses and industrial parks – leased to the likes of DHL, Renault and H&M – plus another 26 million square metres of land across ten countries. In 2024, CTP posted net profits of €1.1 billion. According to the latest Forbes ranking, Remon Vos’ personal fortune now stands at $7.5 billion.

Not bad for someone born in 1970 in Stadskanaal, a small town in the north-east of the Netherlands, to a student mother and a car-dealer father. After his parents divorced, young Remon moved from one Dutch town to another, catching the business bug early: by 12, he was already making pocket money washing cars and cleaning hair salons. But it was a 1991 trip to what was then Czechoslovakia that would change the course of his life. Travelling with a family friend, Johan Brakema, Vos was struck by the lack of development and infrastructure in the former Eastern bloc.

For Vos, it was a revelation: after the fall of the USSR and the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe was a land of opportunity. With Brakema, he launched a small import business of Dutch products in the Czech Republic, then a steel parts factory. When the two men couldn’t find a suitable building or site, they decided “to build a business park –  so that (their business) could become its first tenants and we could attract others.” In 1998, together with a third Dutchman, Eddy Maas, they founded their first industrial park in Humpolec, named Central Trade Park (CTP).

“Never sell”

“Johan had the money, Eddy the intelligence and I the energy,” Remon Vos told Forbes. “We immediately thought: ‘we are not going to be satisfied with building just one building’,” he added in The CEO Magazine: “the idea was to construct other buildings on the same site in order to create a cluster, an ecosystem of different companies working together. As developers, we would be responsible for all the infrastructure (…), for its maintenance and its repair, so that the tenants could concentrate on their core business.” The CTP model was born.

The early years were tough, but by the 2000s CTP had taken off, becoming the Czech Republic’s leading developer with 22 logistics hubs. It was in these early years that Vos learned his biggest lesson, which became his guiding principle: never sell. “If you build a park, the idea is to keep building it,” he says. “We build to last, not to trade. We don’t sell. We don’t put up isolated buildings, only parks.”

It’s a philosophy that Remon Vos gradually extended to all of Eastern Europe, conquering new markets in Poland, in Romania, in Hungary, in Serbia, etc. Everywhere he establishes himself, Vos applies the same strategy: develop his real estate projects rapidly, even when these are rented only at 30% or 40% of their area; keep adjacent buildable land for future expansions; and, finally, retain and diversify his clients, 87% of whom renew their contract at the expiration of their lease. All these assets have enabled CTP’s rental income to grow on average by +16% per year since 2019.

To continue its expansion, CTP was listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange in 2021, three years after Remon Vos had bought out all the shares of his two partners. Raising one billion dollars, the operation was then one of the most important real estate IPOs in Europe. A bigger group also means bigger responsibilities: as early as 2018, CTP launched its first “green bonds” and focused on ESG (environmental, social and governance). But it was not without its difficulties: “ESG is complex,” admitted Vos in the pages of The CEO Magazine, “but we are actively committed to it (…). We think it is a fantastic opportunity.” Opportunities, in fact, are what the entrepreneur sees in every crisis he has had to face: the 2008 financial crash, Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, and more recently the tariff war between Europe and the United States… “I firmly believe that change is an opportunity,” the billionaire told Forbes.

“One spirit, one team, one club”: at the YCM, Remon Vos joins the world elite of sailing.

Change is something that Remon Vos pursues on land as well as at sea. After all, it’s the sea – the Mediterranean, in this case – that links the Eastern European magnate and Monaco. It’s where the speed and adrenaline enthusiast represents the Principality, entering Black Jack 100 in the most prestigious and demanding sailing races in the world: the Palermo-Montecarlo, one of the most hotly contested competitions for maxi-yachts; the Rolex Fastnet Race, by far the largest offshore yacht race in the world; etc. Launched from the shipyards in 2005, the yacht, previously named Alpha Romeo II, sails under the colours of the equally prestigious and demanding Yacht Club de Monaco.

It’s clear that this seasoned helmsman is a far cry from a fair-weather sailor. Not content with pacing the quays of Port Hercule, Remon Vos regularly takes the helm of the monohull, as he did for the centenary edition of the Fastnet, in which the crew of Black Jack 100 crossed the finish line in first place. A tight battle of two days, 12 hours, 31 minutes and 21 seconds. Enough to more than earn his place among the elite of world sailing – for not just anyone joins the YCM. Fortune, here, counts for nothing; membership is exclusive. As the club’s official website stipulates, “any person (…) wishing to become a member of the YCM is required to be introduced by two sponsors, members of the YCM.” The application of the candidate is then approved – or not – by Prince Albert II himself.

Remon Vos is therefore part of a very select circle, numbering more than 2,500 members all the same, which was officially founded in 1953 by Prince Rainier III. Convinced that “the future of Monaco lies with the sea,” the Sovereign then wanted to make the YCM one of the major pillars of the development of the Principality’s port. Meetings and regattas multiplied, while a new generation of racers was trained in the sailing school. In 1984, Prince Albert II was appointed president of the club, placing particular emphasis on traditional yachting – with the launch, ten years later, of Monaco Classic Week. Another decade on, in 2014, the YCM inaugurated its new Club House, in a spectacular building designed by Lord Norman Foster.

But the YCM is more than a sailing club, more than an architectural feat, more than an emblematic landmark of Monegasque life. “It is a living space,” explained Bernard d’Alessandri, its secretary general, in our pages in 2023, adding that “we can measure the momentum of the club through its volunteers: for each regatta, we count between 50 and 100 volunteers. (…) After 70 years, the club remains dynamic, youthful, full of hope, innovations, and projects.” The YCM, whose motto is “one spirit, one team, one club,” counts among its most famous members Pierre Casiraghi, the son of Princess Caroline, who won the Admiral’s Cup 2025 with Peter Harrison; Cypriot billionaire and Monaco resident John Christodoulou; and Boris Herrmann, who sailed the Vendée Globe with Seaexplorer – Yacht Club de Monaco.

A rising figure in Monaco life?

Remon Vos is certainly in good company when he steps through the doors of the YCM, something he only allows himself to do when his overloaded schedule gives him a moment of respite. Splitting his life between Central Europe, the Netherlands and Monaco, the business leader is, by his own admission, a “man without a fixed office,” constantly on business trips, jumping from one private jet to another to secure new deals and expand his sprawling empire. In Monaco as in Prague or Amsterdam, patience is required to catch a glimpse of the billionaire, whose media appearances are as rare as they are scrutinised.

In paying particular attention to cultivating an exceptionally elite network in finance, real estate and sport, Vos undoubtedly embodies this new generation of European billionaires better than any other – global, engaged, clear-sighted and resolutely focused on sustainability. And while investment or philanthropic opportunities in the Principality are still to be realised, Remon Vos is unquestionably one of the rising figures in Monegasque life. A man to watch, then, whether on land, in the air… or at sea, of course.