Seanergy Maritime Holdings began preparations for its annual shareholder meeting on 4 November by firing a salvo against minority shareholder George Economou, who has asked for a vote of no confidence in the existing management.
In a letter released on Monday, the current five-member board around chief executive Stamatis Tsantanis urges shareholders to renew the terms of the two existing board members up for re-election while rejecting Economou’s replacement nominees.
The letter indicates that Seanergy does not intend to emulate OceanPal, which fended off a similar Economou challenge by paying the shipowner-turned-activist $6.75m as part of a mutual “support agreement”.
Proceedings are more reminiscent of Genco Shipping instead, where managers opposed Economou and the Greek player eventually called off his bid to change the board while claiming victory with the argument that his intervention helped boost the company’s stock price.
The Genco scenario is also bolstered by the firm language used in the Seanergy letter, in which Economou is described as “a ship owner and a competitor of Seanergy with a well-documented record of self-dealing, shareholder value destruction and poor corporate stewardship”.
In materials accompanying the letter, Seanergy claims that Economou launched litigation against the company in March even though he had given no prior sign of complaints in private interactions with Tsantanis the month before.
In litigation filed in the Marshall Islands against Tsantanis and the board, Economou takes issue with the preferred shares owned by the CEO, which boost his voting powers to 49.99% even though Tsantanis holds just 8.2% of Seanergy’s common stock.
Seanergy’s latest filing shows Costamare owner Konstantinos Konstantakopoulos privately holding a 7.3% stake in the company. Economou holds 9%.
No other player is listed as owning a bigger stake in Seanergy than Tsantanis, Economou or Konstantakopoulos.
