Five years after agreeing to pool forces to create a third-party management giant, Columbia Shipmanagement and Marlow Navigation shed the last vestiges of a merger that never got off the ground.
The two Cyprus-based companies “completed securing regulatory approval” for their de-merger, Marlow said in a statement.
“As is well known in the industry, despite originally declaring their intention to consider [a] merger in September 2017, and the subsequent legal incorporation of a Columbia-Marlow holding entity, both companies continued to successfully operate entirely independently and follow separate business development strategies,” Marlow said.
“The exploratory intention to merge was therefore amicably abandoned.”
Cypriot authorities had granted regulatory approval for the merged Columbia-Marlow Shipmanagement entity.
That was after Columbia founder Heinrich Schoeller and Marlow counterpart Hermann Eden had agreed to each take a 50% stake in the joint company.
Columbia chief executive Mark O’Neil, who would have become chief executive of the combined entity, had said at the time that talks between the two shareholders began in 2015 and had centred initially on a potential IT co-operation.
Columbia is primarily a technical manager, with a particular strength in tankers, while Marlow is focused on crewing services, leaving minimal overlap between the two organisations.
No link to HSH talks
O’Neil denied that the merger had anything to do with ongoing restructuring talks at the time between Schoeller Holdings and HSH Nordbank.
However, the outfits continued on their separate ways. Columbia has recently struck high-profile cooperation deals with entities such as International Maritime Industries (IMI), a new Saudi yard backed by oil giant Saudi Aramco.
