Norway’s Morits Skaugen has pledged to revive his family’s shipowning company, which is close to collapse.

Eikland has been declared insolvent with negative equity, and holds a DNB loan of 14.4m ($1.7m) and some pieces of art as assets.

The company said in its annual report that its employees have been made redundant and no pensions were paid after September last year. Auditing firm RSM Norge said there is considerable uncertainty over Eikland’s ability to continue operations.

Eikland’s 2018 annual report, which has just become publicly available, shows a pre-tax

loss of NOK 43m and negative equity of NOK 28m.

Skaugen, who holds 93.5% of the shares, has declared he is willing to inject capital to secure a solution for Eikland, according to the report.

Rescue aim

Skaugen did not respond to TradeWinds' request to provide comment on how he now intends to save Eikland. But in an text message, he said: “If you read the annual report, you see that in no doubt I do [intend a rescue].”

He added: “I work every day with meaningful things, of which the most is new and as a result of inspiration I have had. You will see this in later annual reports for Eikland.”

In recent years, Eikland's main asset was a controlling stake in gas carrier company IM Skaugen. The outfit went bankrupt last year, and shares in IM Skaugen became worthless.

IM Skaugen was formed in 1916 by Skaugen's grandfather, Isak, and was listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange in 1990 through a merger between Laboremus and Kosmos.

In 1992, Skaugen took over the company that had grown substantially in the 1980s and early 1990s and at the time had a diversified fleet of 72 ships worth NOK 3.5bn.

Later, IM Skaugen scaled back its fleet and concentrated on small gas carriers. In September last year, a bank syndicate led by Nordea, called back a $34.9m loan, pushing IM Skaugen into bankruptcy.