New York-listed Ardmore Shipping’s longtime chief financial officer is stepping aside to pursue new opportunities after helping to shape the company for more than a decade, TradeWinds has learned.
Paul Tivnan – one of Ardmore’s core C-suite trio with chief executive Anthony Gurnee and chief operating officer Mark Cameron – is resigning the post, with confirmation expected to come as the Irish owner reports second-quarter earnings results on Wednesday.
Tivnan declined to comment when reached on Tuesday. However, market sources said he has quietly circulated word of his move to a select group of contacts.
Tivnan’s replacement is expected to be Bart Kelleher, who has been both CEO and CFO of private Connecticut shipowner Chembulk Tankers.
TradeWinds understands that Tivnan does not have a new job lined up but will explore opportunities both within and outside of shipping.
Tivnan’s departure comes after 12 years, starting with Ardmore’s formation as a private company in 2010. Tivnan was an important shaper of its 2013 initial public offering in New York, which was followed by nine years as a listed public company that has seen the shipowner grow and this year find a long-awaited recovery in charter rates.
Tivnan more recently has been heavily involved in Ardmore’s 2021 joint venture in hydrogen called e1 Marine, a partnership with Oregon-based clean energy firm Element 1 and lender Maritime Partners.
Gurnee recruited Tivnan to his fledgling company in July 2010 from Ernst & Young’s Dublin office, where the latter had been senior manager.
Ardmore found a window in the New York IPO market three years later, as share prices of public product tanker owners were heading up and newbuilding prices were heading down.
“It was a perfect combination, and to Paul’s credit he had done about a year’s worth of prep work. He always had that idea and we were ready to move. We ended up getting it done very rapidly,” Gurnee told TradeWinds in a 2017 interview.
Tivnan explained in the same interview that Ardmore went public with an aim to expand, not to provide an exit for its core investor, Greenbriar Equity Group.
“We have grown and over the period that we have been public there has been opportunity there to create real value,” Tivnan said then. “It was still absolutely the right decision but for us it was an opportunity to create, build and grow.”
Ardmore owns and operates a fleet of MR product and chemical tankers ranging from 25,000 to 50,000 dwt.
