Golden Ocean Group announced a deal to buy the 14-strong fleet of Greek owner Quintana Shipping for approximately $364m in equity and assumed debt.

Oslo and New York-listed Golden Ocean has raised $60m in fresh equity overnight with part of the sum used to preserve its debt repayment holiday and covenants waivers.

Golden Ocean, with a fleet of some 70 vessels, will issue 14.5 million of its shares to Quintana and assume $262.7m in debt. The equity portion of the deal was worth about $101m based on Golden Ocean’s closing price of $7 per share.

Birgitte Ringstad Vartdal, chief executive of Golden Ocean Management, said in a statement: "We are proud to be in the position to acquire a large number of modern, high quality vessels in an all-share transaction.

"This underscores the value the sellers ascribe to our operating platform, management team and corporate strategy."

Golden Ocean, which already has a modern fleet after its merger with what was the Frontline 2012 bulker business, says the six capesizes and eight panamaxes from Quintana have an average age of just four.

Quintana had been an IPO candidate but officially withdrew listing papers in the past few days, so a share-based transaction makes sense for the Greek owner.

"We consider the price obtained to be attractive and expect the transaction to be significantly value-accretive to our shareholders," Vartdal said.

Quintana's fleet was listed by VesselsValue as worth $314m.

Quintana’s lenders agreed to defer repayments on the debt until July 2019 in exchange for a $17.4m down payment. If certain conditions are met, Golden Ocean will pay down the deferred amount of $40.6m through a cash sweep.

The average interest rate of the debt to be assumed in connection with the acquisition of Quintana's fleet is Libor plus 3.1% margin and ordinary debt repayments, following the end of the waiver period in July 2019, will amount to $5.8 million per quarter.

Separately, Golden Ocean agreed to acquire two 2017 ice class panamax vessels from subsidiaries of Seatankers Management, which are affiliated with Fredriksen’s Hemen Holding.

Golden Ocean will pay 3.3 million of its shares, or approximately $23.1m, for the vessels. In addition, Hemen will issue a seller credit of $22.5m in total, non-amortizing until June 2019 and with interest rate of Libor plus a margin of 3%.

As part of the transactions, Golden Ocean raised $60m from a private placement helping it to grow despite what had seemed restrictive clauses in its bank deals.

"We consider this a positive as it continues to secure industry low break-even's which secures the company's liquidity position if spot rates were to turn sour during the next 12-18 months," said Bjorn Kristian Roed of Danske Bank.

Herman Hildan and Frode Morkedal of Clarksons Platou Securities said: "Overnight Golden Ocean and its main shareholder has yet again showed why they are perceived as industry leaders deserving premium valuation."