Merger of oil tanker shipping company Euronav is canceled: Antwerp Saverys family receives blow at home after months of power struggle (Antwerp)
For months now, the Belgica building in Antwerp South has been the setting of an economic power struggle at the highest level. Met the extremely wealthy Saverys family of shipping company CMB in one headquarters and Euronav CEO Hugo De Stoop, who is in the camp of the Norwegian Cypriot billionaire and Frontline owner John Frederiksen, in the other.
On 7 April, Antwerp-based Euronav and its Norwegian rival Frontline announced their agreement in principle to form the largest oil tanker shipping company in the world, with 69 supertankers and 75 regular tankers. Under the plan, the combined group would be renamed Frontline and Euronav CEO Hugo De Stoop would become the CEO. The market value of the new company would be 3.85 billion euros.
Saverys in defense
But the triumphant announcement fell on a cold stone a day later. Scheepvaartgroep CMB, Euronav’s largest shareholder, said it opposed the merger. “We will not go along with the short-sighted story in which the transport of fossil fuels is central,” CEO Alexander Saverys said in this newspaper. He sees a future for Euronav as a transporter of environmentally friendly fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia. Euronav’s leadership is convinced that oil will continue to play a prominent role in the economy for quite some time to come.
The tone was immediately set for the chess game that would follow. With the stock market as the main battleground. In order to prevent the merger, the Saverys family must receive 25% of the votes at a special general meeting of the shareholder. Each camp threw many millions of euros at it to buy additional shares. Financially that is absolutely not a bad move: at the beginning of April the share was quoted around 10 euros, now it is already around 19 euros.
Alarm bells
But a few days ago, it was reported that Frederiksen was important in Euronav had fallen again, from 18.8 to 17.8%. Alarm bells immediately went off. Especially when it turned out that the Saverys family already owned more than 23% of the shares. Since Tuesday, CMB has mathematical certainty that the merger is over: the 25% shares have been acquired.
Nevertheless, this is mainly a symbolic step, according to KBC Securities analyst Olivier Vandewoude. “It even got to the point that the family would have enough shares to interrupt the merger. Euronav’s management also experience this. In practice, this does not change that much. If Frontline launches its offer to vary shares of Euronav and becomes a majority shareholder, it can play the boss over Euronav: have the financial parts discussed, pursue a shared personnel policy, the strategies are aligned, economies of scale, … It will then remain two separate companies , but in terms of policy they are governed together.”
The general meeting at which Euronav’s shareholder must discuss the merger plans is scheduled for the first quarter of 2023. Early next year, the exchange offer must also disappear, whereby Frontline offers its own shares in exchange for Euronav shares in order to pull the strings. get hands. No one at Euronav will comment on the news of CMB’s blocking minority for the time being.
What now?
How to proceed now? Alexander Saverys wants Euronav to stop paying out the dividends it earns from oil transport to shareholders. According to him, the money should be studied in new technologies, so that Euronav also transports environmentally friendly energy sources such as hydrogen and ammonia in recent years. He also wants Euronav to eventually transport dry bulk and other materials instead of oil, with ships that will be replaced by hydrogen instead of diesel. A vision that clashes with that of the current Euronav leadership and Frontline: they still see a lot of value creation in oil. CMB integrated to become a difficult minority shareholder.
Anyone who will understand the drive of the Saverys family in this merger battle must also look back in history. The Saverysen include Euronav as their kind. It is CMB that founded the oil tanker fleet Euronav in 1995 together with a French shipowner. Marc Saverys, father of Alexander, is the director of the success story of Euronav, which under his leadership has grown into the largest independent tanker shipping company in the world. The Saverys family previously governed Euronav as an independent company in the fierce battle to prevent the merger with Frontline. The first battle is in.
The main characters
John Frederiksen: self-made man with assets of 11.46 billion euros
Norwegian-Cypriot magnate John Frederiksen (78) ranks 158th in the world with assets of 11.46 billion euros. Forbes Billionaire Index, a list of the world’s most wealthy. Not bad for a self-made man who started shipping oil from the Middle East in Lebanon in the late sixties and bought his first own ship in 1973. In addition to his oil tanker company Frontline, he is also the main shareholder of Mowi, the largest salmon and trout breeder in the world. When he, as the richest Norwegian, got into a dispute with his country’s tax authorities, he opted for a Cypriot passport in 2006. The headquarters of his company Frontline is registered in Bermuda, but in principle will move to Cyprus next week, he himself operates from London.
Alexander Saverys: part of one of the most powerful maritime families
Alexander Saverys (44) is not only CEO of shipping company CMB, he is part of one of the most powerful families in the maritime world. The name Saverys is probably known because of the large shipbuilders Boelwerf and Cockerill and has traveled around the globe with shipping companies Bocimar (bulk ships), Exmar (gas tankers) and Euronav (petroleum tankers). The family is one of the wealthiest in our country. In the ranking of the richest Belgians, wealth of hundreds of millions of euros invariably appears behind their names. Alexander Saverys started with the transition to green energy, in which he sees green hydrogen in particular as the holy grail. He has already launched several world firsts with his subsidiary CMB.Tech, including a hydrogen-powered marine engine. He has the ambition to make CMB the first fully CO₂-neutral shipping company in the world. Today, the company already has four ships that run on hydrogen and six more will be added next year.