Financial investor Lars Windhorst has taken a majority stake in cash-strapped German shipbuilder Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft (FSG).
Windhorst’s Sapinda Holding has tied up a deal with Siem Europe to acquire 76% of the shares and help solve its liquidity problems by injecting €33m ($37.23m) into the yard.
Siem, which has owned FSG since 2014, is also assisting by converting €10m of outstanding debt in the builder into equity.
Keeping board positions
The former Norwegian parent says it will remain an active shareholder and have a majority of positions on the FSG board.
It says all stakeholders, including customers and suppliers, have contributed to make the transaction possible.
No figures have been released on how much Sapinda is paying or details of concessions by others.
Siem said in a statement: “We look forward to working with Sapinda, with whom we have been co-investors in the past, and with all the other stakeholders of FSG, including customers, suppliers, employees and creditors, to continue to develop FSG as a designer and builder of quality vessels.”
FSG’s problems can be traced back several years, including a loss-making venture into offshore well intervention, heavylift semi-submersible and seismic vessels.
More recently, it has been hit by delays to Irish Ferries’ 50,000-gt ropax WB Yeats and to an LNG-fuelled ropax for Brittany Ferries.
Loss-making venture
FSG said delays had triggered substantial losses, reported elsewhere to have been in the double-digit million euro penalty range for the WB Yeats.
Sapinda describes itself as a global investment group formed in 2009 by a select number of entrepreneurs and prominent high-net worth families.
Windhorst co-founded the group in 2004 after creating in the early 1990s Windhorst Electronics with Chinese businessman Ming Rong Zhang.
Other ventures followed and Windhorst was at one point referred to as a “wunderkind” of the German economy, although companies associated with him have faced problems over the years.
Sapinda acquired luxury fashion brand La Perla in February 2018.
