Editor’s selection: Troim’s back, carbon gambit and shipbroker goes bust

After 15 years outside the crude tanker sector, Norwegian shipping entrepreneur Tor Olav Troim is about to return in a big way. Troim’s private Magni Partners is preparing to order a pair of dual-fuel VLCCs, which can run on LNG and conventional bunkers, for delivery in 2026 and 2027 at a shipyard he declined to identify.

Troim told a Marine Money Week audience that he had been to “hell” and back, in an apparent reference to the past financial struggles of his Borr Drilling company and to continuing efforts to make progress with floating LNG production with his Golar LNG. These and comments on former ally John Fredriksen’s efforts to buy Euronav were the subject of Joe Brady’s shipping finance newsletter this week.

The European Union, UK and US are among the countries demanding tough intermediary greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for 2030 and 2040 at an International Maritime Organization working group meeting next week. The move is being viewed as an opening gambit to push developing country member states towards accepting a zero greenhouse gas emissions target for 2050.

Lorentzen & Co — Norway’s oldest shipbroker — declared bankruptcy this week. The 104-year-old outfit had suffered years of financial losses, and the bankruptcy followed a change in ownership at parent company Tidships. The company posted a loss in every year but one from 2015 to 2021. Read Matt Coyne’s story to find out what went wrong.

TradeWinds’ Matt Coyne also reports on former Lorentzen S&P head Axel Holmen, about his new shipbroking venture. Working alongside Wilhelm Holst and a junior broker, Holmen intends to build a shop that ‘will last’.

Investment bank the Maxim Group came under attack for its controversial shipping deal-making on Thursday on a panel at the annual Marine Money Week conference in New York. TradeWinds’ Joe Brady was there to witness the fireworks.

Paul Peachey caught up with shipping veteran Peter Georgiopoulous on a visit to London. The entrepreneur, who runs Athens-based United Overseas Group, said he will shun the newbuilding market while a vessel faces being made obsolete within five years because of regulations and new fuels. He also framed the attempted Frontline-Euronav merger as an “unprofessional” boardroom battle driven by ego and the defence of shipping fiefdoms.

Our Green Seas environment newsletter looks at the Hong Kong Convention through the lens of one nation that is tired of waiting — India.

Douglas Bateson, partner and head of the Piraeus office of Penningtons Manches Cooper, has died in a car crash. The accident occurred in downtown Athens. The vehicle Bateson was reportedly driving rammed a reinforced cement pillar carrying a camera across the street from the US embassy.

And finally, Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines says it has successfully completed the country’s first trial of marine fuel made from cow dung on an LNG-fuelled ship. MOL says the project shows the carbon-neutral energy source could be transported using existing LNG supply chains.