Former Western Bulk Carriers chief executive Jens Ismar is expected to take up a management position at Saverys family-controlled gas shipping company Exmar, commercial sources said.
The shipping veteran is poised to start in September and will be in charge of LPG shipping, working part-time from Oslo.
Ismar declined to confirm the market talk that he is headed for a post at the Belgian shipowner, where he has long been a non-executive board member.
Non-competition period
“It could be,” he said, reached at his Norwegian holiday home. “I know them very well.
“I worked mainly in gas during my time as a broker and then at Bergesen, although there was some dry cargo shipping and tankers as well there.”
Ismar said the terms of his departure from Western Bulk in April give him a six-month non-competition period, but that would only keep him out of dry bulk shipping jobs.
“In September, I will be free, and if I find what I want outside the dry bulk sector, I could do it any time,” he said.
But he acknowledged that Norwegians do not normally take such steps during the holiday month of July.
Ismar has headed a series of top Oslo shipping companies, but a management post at Nicolas Saverys-led Exmar would be his first abroad.
TradeWinds reported in February on his looming departure from the helm of Western Bulk after more than 10 years. Before that, he served for seven years as commercial director of Bergesen DY and BW Gas, and for four years as managing director of broker Lorentzen & Stemoco in Oslo.
In September, I will be free, and if I find what I want outside the dry bulk sector, I could do it any time
Jens Ismar
He has been on the board since 2010 at Euronext-listed Exmar and since 2013 at Ocean Yield, which has commercial connections as a tonnage provider of containerships and bulkers to Belgium-based Saverys group companies.
Succession planning
Exmar management could not immediately be contacted for comment. But Exmar chief executive Nicolas Saverys has succession planning in the back of his mind at the comparatively young age of 61, even if not urgently, according to a revealing interview in February with Belgian financial newspaper De Tijd.
The gas shipping pioneer recounted a series of brushes with death over the past four years, both corporate and personal. On a 2017 Tanzanian safari with his daughter, Saverys says he escaped a goring by literally taking a charging female buffalo by the horns and being thrown. This came the day after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which was successfully treated.
He told De Tijd his son Carl-Antoine Saverys is working at the family company after a two-year stint with a Hamburg owner.
“He turns 30 this year. I myself have passed 60. A time is coming when I will have to no longer be so hands-on,” the elder Saverys said. “That is going to be a challenge. I don’t want to play the aggravating mother-in-law.”
