Tidewater taps offshore marine veteran to lead board of directors

Tidewater has promoted a member of its board of directors and a 35-year veteran of the offshore marine sector as its new chairman.

The Houston-based offshore vessel giant announced that it hired Dick Fagerstal for the non-executive role, replacing the retired Larry Rigdon.

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Tapping an existing director, without a replacement to take Fagerstal’s prior role, reduces the size of Tidewater’s board from nine to eight members.

Fagerstal takes charge of the New York-listed company’s board at what he described as an “exciting time” for the sector.

“I believe the company is well positioned to capitalise on the increasing global offshore activity with recently closed (and pending) additions to its fleet of offshore vessels,” he said.

Fagerstal has served on the Tidewater board for six years. Since 2021, he has also been an independent director at offshore drilling contractor Valaris, where he also serves as chairman of its audit committee and a member of its committee on environmental, social and governance matters.

Until March, he was executive chairman of UK subsea cable installation and maintenance company Global Marine Group, a role he started in February 2020 after serving as chairman and chief executive of its prior owner, Global Marine Holdings, from 2014 to 2020.

Fagerstal has also served on the board of Frontier Oil, in addition to stints at conglomerate Seacor Holdings and its helicopter spin-off Era Group, at Chiles Offshore and as a banker at DNB.

Before starting his business career, he was an officer in the Swedish Special Forces. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics and law from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and a master’s in business administration from New York University, where he studied on a Fulbright scholarship.

Fagerstal’s rise to chairman was expected.

Tidewater announced in April that prior chairman Rigdon, a major figure in the US Gulf Coast offshore vessel industry, would retire on 26 June after serving in the role since 2019. And the company said at the time that the board had asked Fagerstal to take his place.