New York investor FourWorld Capital Management will learn in September if a bid to cancel Euronav’s full takeover by the Saverys family’s Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB) has succeeded.
The Brussels Market Court will issue a judgment on 6 September in the case, according to the De Tijd newspaper.
Euronav confirmed to the newspaper that the matter was ongoing.
The Market Court hears appeals against certain decisions made by regulators regarding competition law and public takeover bids.
It is part of the Court of Appeal.
Legal action was launched by FourWorld in February as CMB sought to close a mandatory offer for the rest of Euronav after buying shares controlled by John Fredriksen, who acquired 23 Euronav VLCCs at the same time.
The suit was rejected by courts in Belgium and the US in March.
In April, FourWorld began a new legal action in the Enterprise Court of Antwerp, widening the case to summon Fredriksen’s private companies Famatown Finance, Hemen Holding and Geveran Trading, as well as CMB, Euronav and Fredriksen’s publicly listed tanker company, Frontline.
FourWorld has claimed that a series of transactions involving Euronav, John Fredriksen and the Saverys family took advantage of minority shareholders.
In the New York outfit’s first public comments on its lawsuits, chief investment officer John Addis told the Financial Times in April the deals constituted “one of the most egregious cases we have ever seen”.
Arbitration halted
FourWorld told the newspaper it opposed the agreement between CMB and Fredriksen because it halted Euronav’s arbitration proceedings against Fredriksen’s Frontline, started after the tycoon pulled Frontline out of a merger with Euronav last year.
The US fund said Euronav would have had an “extraordinarily strong chance” of winning “large-scale damages”, to the benefit of smaller investors.
But Euronav chief executive Alexander Saverys hit back, saying winning the arbitration case was not certain.
“The company would have had to proceed with the case for years and years, incurring a lot of costs, keeping the company in deadlock for an indefinite period of time, and all of this for a very uncertain outcome,” he told the Financial Times.
“We are adamant that we are in the right and that we have done nothing wrong. We will vigorously defend ourselves against these claims that have no merit,” he said.
