The longtime headquarters of Connecticut-based pools player Heidmar is to remain open with current staffing under the company’s new chief executive and full ownership by Greek shipowner George Economou.
That was the word this week from freshly appointed CEO Pankaj Khanna, who spoke with TradeWinds on the sidelines of the Marine Money Week conference in New York today.
Heidmar’s other US office in Houston will also survive the transition and Khanna envisions it as the primary home of US chartering functions going forward.
Toward that end, he revealed that operations director Harold Boyer requested a move to Texas’ largest city from his current seat in Norwalk, Connecticut and will now be Houston based.
Khanna said he spoke with employees in both US offices this week about his plans for the pools operator after replacing former chief executive James Pippard last week.
“There’s a sense of relief among the employees,” Khanna said about the continuation of the US operations.
Khanna has long-term ideas about expanding Heidmar into adjacent business areas, making it look a bit more like the company sold by founder Per Heidenreich in 2006 for some $210m: it had distinct business lines in pooling, an in-charter book, lightering and digital vessel data.
But Khanna stressed that such things are for the future.
“The focus in this year and next is on performance and growth,” of the company’s pools, Khanna said.
Those numbers had dwindled from about 100 to roughly 65 at present since the departure of Pippard’s predecessor, Ben Ognibene, spread across pools in aframaxes, suezmaxes and VLCCs.
Pippard started new business lines in bunkering and freight forward agreements (FFAs) and those will continue, Khanna said.
Like Pippard, Khanna intends to be based in London but will travel extensively among the Heidmar offices, which also include an outpost in Singapore.
Khanna said he’s hired a new marketing staffer in that office and will place a renewed emphasis on marketing the pools and building their numbers.
He sees Norwalk as a center for financial business, which could include capital raising for a time-charter fund that would allow clients to customise their own plays on the IMO 2020-fueled tanker market.
The current staffing in Connecticut reflects previous cuts following the decline in vessels under management, Khanna said. Norwalk and London now have essentially equal staffing numbers.
As TradeWinds reported 10 June, Economou’s publicly listed DryShips paid what appears to be a bargain-basement price of $17m to buy out the 49.8% holding of financial giant Morgan Stanley and a 0.4% stake held by Heidmar’s employees.
DryShips already owned the other 49.8% after buying it from Economou’s private holding in August 2017.
Economou has since proposed to buy the remaining public float of DryShips — about 17% — and take the company private.
