Norway’s Wilh Wilhelmsen Holding is continuing to mop up minority shareholders in its car carrier investment company Treasure.
The Oslo-listed ship manager and investor said it had spent a further NOK 201m ($19m) on 7.1m shares on Friday, following a previous deal last week that added 4m Treasure shares for $11m.
Wilh Wilhelmsen now has 84.09% of the Oslo-listed subsidiary’s stock, up from 80.64%, reducing trading liquidity and making a mooted delisting more likely.
Treasure has an 11% stake in South Korean shipowner Hyundai Glovis worth $528m.
The Wilhelmsen group failed to pull off a full takeover of Treasure last year.
The stock was trading up 0.2% at NOK 27.80 on Monday in Oslo.
The Hyundai Glovis fleet of 43 vessels is assessed as worth $4.9bn by VesselsValue.
It comprises car carriers, VLCCs, bulkers, VLGCs and an LNG carrier.
Wilh Wilhelmsen is also a big shareholder in car carrier owner Wallenius Wilhelmsen.
Treasure is chaired by Wilh Wilhelmsen chief executive Thomas Wilhelmsen.
TradeWinds reported last year that Wilh Wilhelmsen had made an offer at NOK 20 per share to buy out Treasure’s minority shareholders.
But this yielded just over 1m share tenders, or 0.52% of all outstanding stock.
The offer was made to create a “liquidity event” in Treasure’s shares, Wilh Wilhelmsen said, with the intention of raising its stake.
Once the 90% ownership threshold was reached, the group intended to re-evaluate Treasure’s listing on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
Treasure’s independent directors, Marianne Hagen and Benedicte Bakke Agerup, commissioned a fairness opinion from Pareto Securities last year, which found the price did not constitute a fair valuation of the company.
