Famed shipowner Peter Georgiopoulos is back in acquisition mode, taking in an 11-year-old MR tanker from Dee4 Capital of Denmark.
Brokers placed a $26.5m price tag on the 50,100-dwt Dee4 Fig (built 2011) purchase by Greece’s United Overseas Group (UOG), which is jointly run by Georgiopoulos and long-time business partner Leo Vrondissis.
A UOG representative declined to comment, saying the company’s policy is not to remark on sale-and-purchase transactions. Dee4 Capital did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, TradeWinds has been able to confirm that UOG is the buyer of the Onomichi Dockyard-built tanker, which is estimated to be worth $25.62m by valuation platform VesselsValue.
The acquisition pushes UOG’s fleet of product and chemical carriers to 20.
However, UOG has been a buyer and seller of tonnage in recent months and is thought to be moving opportunistically in either direction rather than on a pure fleet build-up.
UOG’s establishment was announced in January 2021, when the company was created in a complex “reverse triangular merger” that saw it acquire Dubai-based United Arab Chemical Carriers (UACC) for an undisclosed price.
UACC was founded in 2007 with a fleet of 22 vessels, of which 20 were owned. The owned vessels were made up of nine chemical tankers, two LR1s and nine MRs.
The UOG-UACC transaction marked Georgiopoulos’ comeback as a shipowner after the first hiatus of his 30-year career, stemming from Euronav’s June 2018 takeover of his Gener8 Maritime.
Vrondissis was a trusted lieutenant to Georgiopoulos at Gener8 Maritime and its predecessor, General Maritime, both of which were based in Manhattan.
TradeWinds reported in August that UOG had made its first acquisition since the UACC combination, taking in Greek shipowner Petros Pappas’ 51,700-dwt tanker Orwell (built 2010).
TradeWinds also reported in August that Dee4 Capital had shifted to sales mode in order to take advantage of stronger valuations in the clean product market.
The company, founded by Carsten Mortensen and Freddie Lee in 2019, confirmed at that time that it had offloaded the 47,000-dwt Dee4 Dogwood (built 2008) and 46,000-dwt Dee4 Cedar (built 2010) for about $44m combined.
“The rationale is that we got a good offer, and buying and selling vessels is an integrated part of our business,” Mortensen said at the time.
