It is getting to the point where one could use a scorecard to keep track of Greek shipping magnate George Economou’s activist shareholding stakes in New York-listed shipowners.
And there is a new entry on that card after Economou and his Sphinx Investments bumped up their shareholding to a 14.1% stake in Diana Shipping spin-off OceanPal.
Economou said in a public filing on Friday that he had pushed his OceanPal cache over the 1m shares mark with the purchase of 78,307 more units since 18 March for a total consideration of $217,000.
At last reporting in March, Economou held 972,000 shares, or 13.1% of the company.
OceanPal is one of four listed companies that have seen Economou invest and then launch some sort of activist intervention.
It is one of two spin-offs of Greece’s Diana, founded by Simeon Palios, to be targeted by Economou for stock purchases and then attempts to change the composition of the board.
In the case of tanker owner Performance Shipping, he is pressing a lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court charging that the board has breached its fiduciary duties to shareholders.
As TradeWinds has reported, Economou in a previous filing demanded the resignations of five OceanPal directors while nominating two of his own to stand for election at the next general shareholders meeting.
OceanPal is led by Palios’ daughter and largest shareholder, Semiramis Paliou, who is one of the five directors Economou is seeking to remove, along with Styliani Alexandra Sougioultzoglou, Alexios Chrysochoidis, Eleftherios Papatrifon and Grigorios-Filippos Psaltis.
Economou’s board nominations
He has nominated John Liveris, a veteran of two former New York-listed companies then controlled by Economou, for election to the OceanPal board.
Economou also nominated Georgios Kokkodis, an independent financial consultant.
OceanPal owns a fleet of five bulkers but also has investments in two chemical tanker newbuildings.
Economou’s OceanPal stake makes him the company’s third-largest holder. But the identity of the top two makes it a tall task for him to get his way in a shareholder vote: Diana owns 49% of the company and Paliou 26.2%, according to OceanPal’s last annual report.
The Greek tycoon’s most high-profile spat of late has been his proxy battle with New York-listed Genco Shipping & Trading, where he is trying to oust incumbent board chairman James Dolphin.
The two sides have exchanged public tit-for-tat barbs ahead of an annual shareholders meeting in May, with Economou challenging Genco’s capital-allocation record and the New York owner recounting Economou’s own chequered governance record in his days leading then-public DryShips.
But that is not the end of Economou’s name-and-shame campaign. He also has filed a lawsuit in the Marshall Islands against New York-listed Seanergy Maritime and chief executive Stamatis Tsantanis over the executive’s purchase of 49.9% voting control of the company.
