Scrubber maker and entrepreneur Bjornar Feen has been hit with a preliminary freezing order in Oslo District Court by former partner Viking Engineering.
The Norwegian action comes after Swedish-controlled Viking failed to collect on a judgment in Singapore.
Viking’s claim for NOK 87m ($9.78m) is part of a long-running dispute over its 30% shareholding in an entity formerly known as Viking Inert Gas (VIG), controlled by Norwegian and Indonesian-based Feen Marine.
Viking has already won an order from the High Court of Singapore in February 2018 for the forced buyout of its share in VIG and another order there in November 2020 for the freezing of Feen’s assets.
But Viking must relitigate the case in Norway because Singapore and Norway have no treaty for mutual recognition of each other’s civil court judgments.
Oral argument in Oslo District Court is set for later this month.
Norwegian business newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv reported on Wednesday that the Oslo preliminary order had been issued.
Feen told TradeWinds his company is not suffering the consequences of the lawsuit.
No business impact
“No business is affected, as this is a claim against me personally,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t have any comment at the moment except that I deny they have a legitimate case against me in Norway.”
The order details Viking’s allegations that following the Singapore freezing order, Feen moved his assets from Singapore to Norway and transferred ownership of his companies to his son Nicholas Feen, who today holds 100% of shares in Feen Marine according to current Norwegian public records.
The background for the dispute is a share sale-and-purchase agreement whose terms were allegedly not honoured. Much in the case hinges on the names of the entities.
At the beginning of the Singapore litigation in 2017, Bjornar Feen controlled Feen Marine, ScanJet Feen IGS and scrubber maker Feen Marine Scrubbers. Although Feen very much remains in the scrubber business, he had sold all his shares in the last of these entities by 2019 and it was eventually merged into Clean Marine, a company unrelated to the present dispute.
Feen’s opponent Singapore-based Viking Engineering is controlled by Bo Johansson and Sune Andersson.
Under a September 2013 agreement, Viking sold Feen 21% of its 51% holding in VIG. As new majority owner, Feen agreed to stop using the name Viking and changed the company name to Feen Marine. The agreement also gave Viking a right of first refusal in case Feen sold their former shares in VIG.
But instead of changing the jointly owned company’s name to Feen Marine, Feen set up a company of his own under that name and transferred his shares in VIG to it. Also allegedly transferred were contracts that belonged to VIG as he retired the old name.
Although Viking remained a 30% shareholder in VIG, the company claimed Feen did not keep it informed about the company’s business, in violation of its minority shareholder rights. In 2017 Viking brought the Singapore lawsuit, ultimately winning the Singapore buyout order.
The name Viking Inert Gas is currently in use by Viking for its relevant product line, according to the Viking website.
