Creditors of Swiber Holdings gave their overwhelming approval for a bailout offer from a familiar face on the Singaporean offshore scene.
The Abdulaziz Ali Al Turki-led Rawabi Holding, a Saudi Arabian offshore engineering giant, offered $200m in exchange for an 80% stake in Swiber Holdings.
The move comes as Swiber Holdings has been under a court-supervised restructuring process since revealing severe financial difficulties back in July 2016.
At a meeting on Tuesday, creditors representing about 99% of the combined $1bn debt of Swiber Holdings and affiliated Swiber Offshore Construction agreed Rawabi’s proposed offer.
The approval allows Swiber Holdings’s judicial managers KPMG to finally move forward with bringing its restructuring process to conclusion.
Under the proposal, Rawabi will provide an initial tranche of $10m in exchange for an 80% shareholding interest in a new holding company.
Share subscription
Secondly, upon securing the development stage LNG-to-power project in Vietnam and achieving major project milestones, a subsequent tranche of $190m which will be used to subscribe for preference shares in Equatoriale Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Swiber Holdings, which will also form part of New Swiber Group and its subsidiaries.
Unsecured creditors of Swiber Holdings and Swiber Offshore Construction will hold a 14% stake in New Swiber, while key management and professional service providers will hold a combined 3% stake.
Existing Swiber Holding shareholders will see their combined interest reduced to 3% in New Swiber.
This arrangement is very similar to a 2019 proposal put forward by KPMG that would have seen Seaspan Corp plough $200m into Swiber Holdings in exchange for an 80% stake. Seaspan, a New York-listed shipowner, backed out of the deal after certain conditions precedent for its completion were not met by the stipulated deadline.
Rawabi will gain control of a second Singaporean offshore company once Swiber Holdings’ restructuring process is completed.
The Saudi company bought into Vallianz Holdings in November 2016 to help the struggling operator fully redeem debt that was about to mature.
Direct shareholdings in Vallianz, together with a 50% stake in Rawabi Vallianz Offshore Services, gave Rawabi an overall controlling interest in the company. Rawabi Vallianz operates the bulk of the Vallianz Holdings fleet.
