Teekay Tankers is being tipped to join the consolidation trend sweeping the crude tanker market with the purchase of sibling Tanker Investments Ltd (TIL).
Analysts at DNB Markets believe the New York-listed owner will table an offer for Oslo-quoted TIL before the end of this year.
A combination of Teekay Tankers and TIL would create a company with a market capitalization of $550m, according to DNB Markets analysts Nicolay Dyvik, Petter Haugen and Jorgen Lian said.
They say the enlarged platform would be “more investable”.
TIL was launched in early 2014 as a country-cyclical investment vehicle with capital from Teekay Corp and outside investors.
It built up a fleet of 20 ships by the end of that year having been floated on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
While the initial plan was to sell the fleet to the highest bidder, the company switched strategy in August last year to an operating platform looking to ride out a market downturn.
Calls to Teekay seeking comment on its latest plans for TIL were not answered on Tuesday.
Teekay Tankers has a fleet of 48 owned and chartered tankers, predominantly in the aframax and suezmax markets. TIL has 10 suezmaxes and eight aframaxes on the water, having sold its two VLCCs in 2015.
