New V.Group chief executive Graham Westgarth has placed his focus on operations rather than a long-anticipated initial public offering for the world’s largest shipmanager.
Westgarth took over from Ian El-Mokadem in April after a career spanning three of the world’s best-known public shipping companies, AP Moller-Maersk, Teekay and Peter Livaos’ GasLog.
Today, V.Group is owned by Advent International, the latest in a line of private equity investors to control the company.
Speaking to TradeWinds in Oslo on Wednesday, Westgarth said there were no active discussions around a stock listing for V.Ships, but he did say Oslo could be a potential venue should the company eventually go public.
“Those things tend to look after themselves,” he said when asked about a possible listing.
“If the company is in a certain position at a certain time in its life and it then wants to do something else, that often means you have to think about when you want to be in the public markets to enable that.
IPO 'will naturally come'
“I’m not focused on that at all. If you set yourself up to do that you are deflecting from the main business.
“My view is I’ll focus on the main business and that decision will naturally come down the path at some point in time.”
Westgarth first joined V.Group last year as a director before stepping back into frontline management when El-Mokadem resigned.
“I’m absolutely loving it,” Westgarth said when asked about his return to a CEO role, the same post he held at GasLog. “My wife says I have a new lease of life.”
He said shipping is something he has done “all my life”.
“I’m 47 years old and 48 this year and I’ve always been passionate about operations,” he said. “This is almost a dream job for me."
He praised El-Mokadem for creating a new platform for the company and establishing values with safety at the top of the list and noted that Advent had invested around $30m in technology and other initiatives.
“This has created a wonderful platform which is basically a platform to ensure we have consistent service delivery across our [global] footprint,” he said.
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