Shipping magnate John Fredriksen is sitting on a stake worth $141m in Norway’s DOF Group.
The tycoon’s private Geveran Trading subscribed for $30m of the offshore vessel owner’s stock last week as part of a $100m private placement to raise money towards the $1.1bn takeover of Maersk Supply Service.
Geveran then loaned 8m shares to help DOF settle the placement, before taking redelivery of these on Tuesday.
Fredriksen’s holding now comprises 15.28m shares, or 8.27%, a stake worth NOK 1.5bn ($141m).
This is up from 7.13% previously and the biggest single shareholding in the company.
Geveran earlier ranked behind the BNY Mellon on 8.37% and Norwegian state pension fund Folketrygdfondet on 7.71%.
But the US bank has seen its stake shrink to 8.09%, with the pension fund having 7.92%.
When the Maersk Supply deal closes in the fourth quarter, its owner, AP Moller Holding, will be the biggest shareholder on 25%.
Other significant slices are controlled by Norwegian shipowners Kristian Siem with 4.36% and Arne Blystad with 4.06%.
TradeWinds reported last week that DOF chief executive Mons Aase also added to his stake in the placement.
He bought 31,243 shares for a total of NOK 3.1m.
The CEO now holds 716,026 shares in the company.
Chairman Svein Harald Oygard was allocated the same amount and has the same stake.
Oversubscribed
About 10.75m new shares were allocated for NOK 99 each.
The share was trading at NOK 100.80 in Oslo on Wednesday.
The placement was significantly oversubscribed by existing shareholders.
DOF carried out a $53m IPO in June last year after emerging from bankruptcy.
Fredriksen committed to buying $23m of shares in the IPO, giving him a stake of about 5% at that time.
Existing shareholders were wiped out in the bankruptcy, and banks and bondholders took over after DOF collapsed under the weight of $2.25bn in debt.
Before the IPO, three groups had holdings of more than 10%.
Euroclear Bank was the biggest investor at 15.66% and now has 3%.
Clearstream Banking owned 12.26% and Eksportfinansiering Norge was on 10.39%, but the duo is no longer listed among the top 20 shareholders on the DOF website.
Before the collapse, DOF’s biggest investor was Helge Mogster’s Mogster Offshore with 31.6%.
This holding now stands at 2.16%.
Fredriksen has also this year become the biggest shareholder in offshore wind vessel owner Edda Wind, ahead of Wilh Wilhelmsen and Idan Ofer.
The tycoon also controls listed shipping companies such as Frontline, Golden Ocean Group, Avance Gas and Flex LNG.
