A managerial shake-up at Italian shipping company Premuda will reunite two former colleagues in a new-look executive team.
Tanker veteran Michael Valentin is joining a three-person management team charged with taking the Italian bulker and tanker owner public again.
He is linking up with ex-colleague Marco Fiori, the chief executive of Premuda, in what is seen as a nod to the Genoa-based company’s aspirations in the product tanker sector.
The team also includes Enrico Barbieri, a restructuring specialist who formerly advised Premuda in its relations with banks. Barbieri joins as chief financial officer.
Managerial overhaul
The managerial overhaul has been instigated by Pillarstone, the KKR-backed private equity firm that completed a takeover of Genoa-based Premuda in early 2017.
Premuda was formerly controlled by the Rosina family and financial partners, but collapsed with debts of €350m (then about $400m) after struggling with its finances for several years.
Fiori and his team will oversee the commercial and technical management of Premuda’s eight handysize and two panamax bulkers, a suezmax tanker and two LR1s that are jointly owned with Italy’s Messina Group.
But Premuda’s shipping portfolio is tipped to grow as a result of vessels associated with Pillarstone's acquisitions of about $350m of non-performing shipping loans from Italian banks.
These are expected to help scale up Premuda as it moves towards a possible flotation on an international stock exchange.
Fiori told TradeWinds this week that the focus is shifting towards the tanker sector, where the goal is to acquire the “critical mass to be a player in the market”.
He said that is where Premuda can accrue above-average returns due to “inefficiencies” resulting from the pending introduction of IMO 2020 regulation.
Milan is a very good stock exchange, but I think the lack of other shipping companies and the lack of peers touches a little bit your liquidity. So we will probably focus on a foreign exchange... Oslo is very interesting because it has a lot of the benefits without the negatives
Marco Fiori, chief executive of Premuda
Fiori's interest is in taking smaller tankers, aged between eight and 10 years old, on long-term charters with purchase options.
These are deemed attractively priced in comparison with the newbuildings.
Tanker focus
But scrubbers are unlikely to feature in the Premuda fleet given its focus on smaller tankers.
“On MRs and handies, where we’re looking especially, I think there is not much benefit,” Fiori said. “The logistical problems outweigh the benefits you’d be getting from scrubbers.”
Fiori, 63, joined Premuda in January as a replacement for interim boss Jens Martin Jensen.
That followed his 23-year stint with the d’Amico Group in Monte Carlo, where Fiori ran the tanker desk with Valentin for more than a decade until the latter’s departure in 2010.
Fiori’s former experience as chief executive of Milan-listed d’Amico International Shipping could prove useful as plans to list Premuda on a stock exchange take shape.
Premuda was delisted from the Italian Stock Exchange in Milan in 2017 after Pillarstone completed its acquisition of the company.
Exit strategy
It is likely to be floated again within three to five years to provide Premuda’s private equity backers with a chance to divest their investment, Fiori said.
“We are very much looking at that," he said. "Probably, down the road, we will be a little more active looking at capital markets because it’s a very good exit strategy.”
Liquidity concerns mean it is unlikely that the company will be listed in Italy.
“Milan is a very good stock exchange, but I think the lack of other shipping companies and the lack of peers touches a little bit your liquidity,” Fiori said. “So, we will probably focus on a foreign exchange... Oslo is very interesting because it has a lot of the benefits without the negatives.”
Fiori said the main goal is to transform Premuda “from an Italian company with some international presence, to an international company with some Italian presence”.
“It’s very subtle the change, but I think that’s the goal,” he said.
